Bellingham or Bust

Club Volleyball Dad (or in this case, High School Volleyball Dad) gets to see Maddie play at least one more match as round 1 of the 2A District Tournament played out pretty much like I thought it would.

Match 1 was against Burlington-Edison. Only 8 girls, all underclassmen I think, and only one of them under 6 feet (or at least it seemed to me). They weren't 'wow' tall, but they were all athletic, semi-tall girls and they looked like a team, if you know what I mean. There were no unnecessary parts. Even with that, they were vulnerable when served aggressively and when we were able to attack in system. We got behind by 7 or 8 but rallied right back with some great serves and were up 24-22. BE called a timeout, and in a story familiar to everyone, we came out of it staring at game point....and immediately served it long. Went back and forth and of course we lost and that was effectively it. Got smashed in Game 2. Came back and made it close in Game 3, but any momentum we had went up in smoke after the loss in Game 1. I was a little bummed because I think we hung with the defending State Champs, but BE makes very few unforced errors, and I firmly believe that unforced errors are what lose matches, not great hitting, not great setting...it's the team that gets their serves in, the team that spikes the ball IN to the court, the team that doesn't shank a serve-receive out of bounds, that wins. And against teams that don't MAKE those kinds of errors, we struggle.

Cedarcrest (10-2) coming off a loss to Lynden was a team that ALSO makes their share of unforced errors. That, and the shock of losing that first match and then a close Game 1 to us, was too much. Their coach was fuming; I don't think this was a team that was used to falling apart, but that kind of shows the difference in league strength. The Cascade League is just not that strong and a good KingCo team can beat them, 10-2 or not. Kind of like the Northwest League which put 3 ranked teams in this tournament, one of who we now face on Saturday: Sehome. From all I've read, a good team, but they lost to BE and Anacortes and now they play us, a good team (not great) that on any given day can play with anyone. To beat teams like Sehome, we have to play our A game for every match, and of course, that's been our problem. But you still have to play the game, right? And if we can play our best, we play in one final match. Win that, and we sneak into state. So, it's within our grasp; the girls need to step up and take it.

So off to Bellingham for a noon match and we'll either be coming home at the end of Maddie's career, or looking forward to more next Friday.