The 2023 Season is here.
The team debuted Wednesday against a seasoned (four matches under their belt already) Clairemont team. Unforced errors (UEs) are the bane of young and new teams. Guess which school lost the three close games. Yep.
A highlight of the evening was the debut of 7'-9" freshman Lincoln Holzman (well, it seemed like he's that tall).
Dash Martin was uncharacteristically less effective than normal as the defense focused on getting double blocks on him all night. Welcome to being the Big Hitter, Dash, now that Nate has moved on.
Good, tight games, but the team took an L. Non-conference, though: that's good.
Sweetwater Tournament 2023
What new players and new teams need is lots of touches. Players who did well as role players have a lot more pressure on them as starters. New players need to get used to being on a game court. Every player needs to get used to the other five players on the court. Need lots of touches.
The annual Sweetwater Tournament, two days after the disappointing loss, could provide an opportunity to get those touches, to catalyze that chemistry. Even getting swept out of the tourney provides much needed practice. Wins are bonus. Wins bring more touches. If you get to play every match available, you've done great.
Cents done great:
Friday Night, UC swept all three matches in straight sets. One coach was overheard asking Coach Hartin, "How did you lose to Clairemont while playing like that?"
Saturday morning, UC lost a couple close games to Bonita resulting to a "demotion" to the Silver Division. That's actually not a bad thing at the beginning of a season. It's probably better to get two matches in in the sliver than to get ousted in one in the Gold.
First match in Silver we got off to our trademark slow start, but got it together to sweep the two sets to advance to another match. We can officially call it a good tourney at this point.
Second match first game in Silver, we got beat rather soundly. Hey, good tournament.
Second set of the match, UC simply dominated. Not sure what happened, but we'll take it.
The deciding set of the match was tight until Justin served five blazers that gave us a late lead that we didn't give up.
On to the final against Mission Vista who had been intimidating the parents with their size, depth and skilled warmup drills.
Hey, that's minimum two more games, and a fantastic weekend of team bonding.
And, yes, we only got the minimum of two more games...
Both teams started off fugly ugly in the first set. UC got less ugly towards the end and came away with a big W.
Set Two was really tight until UC simply blew it open with a 13-2 run,, starting with nine straight points (with 6 aces, and MS only attacking once in that span). .
Here's the dramatic streak where UC takes over and closes out the final:
shareable link: https://youtu.be/u3o0vr7vo7Q
You can see the team gets along pretty well (maybe too well).
And the team got plenty of good team practice, a confidence boost, and a big fat 1st Place Trophy.
And perphaps a new tradition: the DaShahab WinSpin:
Great job, Gentlemen! And: Congrats, Coach!
Here's the full Championship Match:
Hitting Cam
In addition to the wide cell phone video, I had a camera zoomed in on the hitter's side (mainly). Match 3 Friday night:
Videos are posted on the UCVolley YouTube Channel.
Pictures:
A few dozen of the best shots:=category|children=0|addlinks=0|tags=|limit=0}
The full 1000+ (note: a lot of this are sequence bursts, so a lot of redundancy)
BTW, last year, we won our two Friday matches, won our first Saturday and then exited with the next match: Sweetwater Tourney - 2022.
JV
Meanwhile, JV was getting some much needed touches in "high pressure" games at the La Jolla JV Tournament.
Twos on the beach is easy to figure out. Raw athleticism can go a long way.
Sixes is complicated. There's a court full of people. Do you have it or do they have it? Surprise is a common element.
Touches, iterations, experience is what it takes to develop the necessary skills - it's not instinct: it's coaching and time in games.
JV played four matches, one a thriller.
Mt. Carmel, who ended Varsity's season with a two-point victory in the final set, did the same to JV on Saturday.
Scripps Ranch was packed with experienced sophomores. Inexperience vs. Experience generally goes in one direction.
Coach Choi says the JV "team improved tremendously in their knowledge of rotations and played some spectacular long rallies. Many of the boys are very athletic and will improve quickly! I rarely had to direct, so the boys just played."
Experience is everything. Enjoy the journey, boys.