Volleyball: A Good Choice

As Maddie and I were leaving her practice today during a cold and windy downpour, we crossed paths with a coach lugging a bag of soccer balls toward the frozen tundra of THEIR practice facility and I realized how thankful I am that Maddie has chosen volleyball as her sport. I spent 2 hours today in a lawn chair reading a travel magazine on a nice warm court while some poor club soccer dad spent time out freezing his rear end off. Good choice, Maddie! It was good to be back at practice; our first since the President's Day debacle. Some tough love and fundamentals were the order of the day. One thing that kind of bugs me is when we don't have all 12 girls at a practice. Maddie and I wanted to go to Palm Springs over Spring Break, but it would have meant missing a practice before a Power League, so we're not going. I guess I think that if you are going to play at this level, you've made a tacit agreement with your coach and teammates to show up and work hard to be the best at EVERY opportunity. I wonder how many WVBA girls miss practice? Hats off to all the DD's who have never missed a practice.

I got Maddie registered at the NCAA Clearinghouse today and plopped down my $65. Maddie wants to play college volleyball at a Northwest school, and as long as that is her dream and she keeps giving 100% in pursuit of that dream, mom and dad will do their parts, whether it's club or clinics or camps or tutors or campus visits...whatever it takes. Trying to become a college athlete means you are meeting certain academic requirements, continuing to improve, making sacrifices and learning to lead. And if the playing part doesn't pan out, at least you have learned to pursue your goals and become a better person doing it. Next step: reaching out to the schools she is interested in (which include Western, Central, Eastern, Montana State-Billings, Portland State and Western Oregon.) We may add some and we may drop some, but the important thing is to let them know you are there and to that end, Mads will be creating a flyer and mailing a 'Get to Know Me' letter to each of those coaches. The jorney begins.

Next up: Power League on Sunday!

Millard Fillmore Volleyball Tournament

On Saturday morning, this was the President's Day Tournament, but the way we played will be remembered in the same way that our 13th President's term will be remembered: forgettable. He co-founded Buffalo University and we moved like a herd of buffalo on a frozen lake. All Presidential joking aside, it was a completely dismal weekend, with the girls going 1-7 and taking the term 'taking a step backwards' to a whole new level. Moxie might have wiped us out. But...it's over now and I guess we just have to refocus and relearn some fundamentals....like passing. We were beat by only one team this weekend; we beat ourselves every other time. Unforced errors on simple serves and free balls, hits out of bounds and into the net, bad serves and a lack of desire and BOOM. 1-7. We're a good team, but there was nothing in the tank. Everyone needs to look in the mirror and decide if they care or not, because it looked like a recreational league, not a club team who wants to be competitive. And this is a good test for our coach who will soon be coaching a Jr College team...how do you motivate? How do you bring out something in a player that ratchets their game up a notch? Do you sit folks? Do you start really looking at stats? Last year with Moxie I think we had a group of girls that were limited in skill but gelled as a team to exceed expectations. This year, at least early, it seems like we have a group of athletic and capable girls who are just underachieving. It's not too late to get back on track by any means, but it's time to shake things up. I don't mind losing. I do mind losing like we lost this weekend. Let's be Lincolns, not Fillmores.

Club Volleyball Dad: Should YOUR DD Play Club?

Happy Valentine's Day!

As we exchanged Valentine's Day greetings this morning, I took a moment to reflect on how much I truly love this DD that shares my life. I can't believe that she has only been playing competitive volleyball for a little more than a year now. And what changes they have brought to her! I remember a year ago with Moxie and they made them run lines and do the plank and it drove her to tears. And now she's in a program called FUEL that is really just an hour where we pay for her to be tortured and she eats it up. And it shows! The girl LOOKS like an athlete. Last week she did her 90 minutes of FUEL and went directly to a scrimmage where they played some crazy game with points only after free balls and girls were running all over and there were no breaks and Maddie (being the setter) was involved in every play. At the end of it all she collapsed on the floor and I marveled at how much she has changed. Club has brought her new friends. It has taught her about competing and responsibility and setting goals. So if you ever wonder, as a parent, if you should make the commitment of time and money to let your daughter play volleyball or soccer or swim, do it. You will watch her change before your eyes. And what better Valentine's Day present is there than the knowledge that your child is learning all these lessons and having a good time to boot.

Now only if we didn't have to face WVBA in our pool in this weekend's President's Day Tourney!

Long Volleyball Day at Kentwood HS

For those of you out of the region, I am now going to attempt to explain Power League without taking up too much of your time. Start with 96 U-15 and U-16 teams from Olympia to Mt. Vernon. Start with 2 weekends of pool play and you end up with the 4 best teams off in their own rarified  grouping, then break the remaining 92 teams into roughly 12 'flights' of 8 teams each. Hold 3 more day long tournaments with the 2 best teams in each flight moving up and the worst 2 teams moving down and hoping for some parity and good play along the way. It's actually a pretty cool set up and each site where play takes place is run by a Director who manages everything and from what I have seen, do a very good job at it and put in many hours along the way. Which brings us to yesterday's event which found ITVC Blue in Flight 4 and ranked 29th out of the 96 teams.

An 8 team tournament is made up of 2 groups of 4. Each team plays the other 3 teams in their group and the top 2 teams from each group make up the afternoon Upper Bracket and the 2 bottom teams from each group make up the Lower Bracket. In the upper bracket, the top finisher in group A plays the number 2 finisher in Group B and the top finisher in Group B plays the number 2 seed from Group A. Same in the lower group. The 2 winners from the upper group have thus finished 1 and 2 and will move to Flight #3 next Power League. The 2 losers from the Upper Level stay in Flight #4 and play each other in a single game to determine who places 3rd and who places 4th. In the Lower Bracket, the same scenario plays out with the top 2 teams staying in Flight #4 next time and the bottom 2 moving to Flight #5. Got all that? Bottom line is that you want to place first or second and move up, or at minimum place 3rd-6th and stay in your flight next time. Worst thing to do is get bumped to a lower flight.

The beauty and perhaps the curse of PL can be summed up by following along with me as I take you on a journey undertaken by 2 teams: ITVC Blue and Space Needle VBC. Both teams made up part of Group A which also included Jammin and OPVBC 16's. ITVC mowed through all 3 teams, winning each match 2-0 and finishing the 'morning' 3-0 with the other 3 teams finishing 1-2. Space Needle claimed #2 by virtue of tiebreaker rules. In the other group, the OPVBC 15's finished first while High Velocity finished second. I put 'morning' in parentheses because it was not until 6 PM that our 3 matches were concluded. Let me say that again: 3 matches in 8 hours. That is truly ridiculous. I have no recommendations for a solution, but I do know that it was a long day, and we did not wrap things up until 9 PM. Dumb. Anyway, we wrapped up the morning 3-0 after beating Space Needle (we also beat them at the last Power League). And yet there they were beating the #1 seed from Group B (OPVBC 15's) and moving up to Flight 3 next time. Right after that, we matched up with High Velocity and lost the first game before winning the second and forcing a Game 3 which we lost 15-13 in a heartbreaker. And thus, in one fell swoop, the team we beat 2-0 is advancing and we're staying put. and to rub salt in the wound, we lost to OPVBC 15's and ended up 4th. Not a great finish after such a great start.

The girls played well early but succumbed to too many unforced errors in the afternoon....but they have to learn to win the important games. A couple of serves over the net instead of into it, a couple of kill shots into the court instead of over it, a couple of good passes instead of shanks..and this team moves up instead of staying in place...but a nice effort by all the girls yesterday, and a fun, if not overly long, day for dad!

Mini Break is OVER!

After 3 weekends in a row, we had a bit of a break but it's right back to it on Saturday for Power League #3. ITVC Blue remains in Flight 4 and is currently ranked 29th out of 96 teams. Good opportunity to move up. Really proud of Maddie as she is already giving back to the sport she has fallen in love with as she will be helping out with the Rose Hill Jr. High volleyball team. A year ago she was playing there and now she's mentoring the younger girls...as if she didn't have enough on her plate already! I showed up a bit early at Jr. High practice to pick her up and it was almost surreal to be back in that gym after all that has happened in the last year. And you can read all about it right here on the blog!

And nice job by the ITVC in hiring the photographer that took the team pictures which are up in http://goitvc.com

Off to a scrimmage with Blaze and more on Sunday!