10 RED
The 10s team played in the Midwest Penguins Tournament at Center Court on Saturday. It was an 11s tournament so we had our work cut out for us! Despite having only 7 players, this team battled hard. We came out strong Match 1 and beat G-Force 11s - our first victory over an 11s team! They did great and even had a few kills and some great 3-hit combos. We moved on to play MWP (who ended up taking gold) but we still played them extremely tough. I am really proud of how these girls worked hard for every point and didn't get discouraged. Even though we were only one of two 10s teams in this tournament, we still placed better than 3 teams! It is hard playing up for most of our tournaments but these girls are resilient and don't get intimidated easily and they do a great job of supporting each other on and off the court!
11 RED
We felt really good about our play last Saturday. Finishing 3rd in the Gold Bracket and placing apx. 3rd out of 12 teams! We are proud of the way the girls played in the second half of the day. Despite the exhaustion seen on some of their faces, they pushed through like Champions do in our semi final game. Its only a matter of time until this team beats those Midwest Penguins!!
Highlights:
Congrats to Paige with 9 or 10 serves in a row; she took the challenge I set out for her with a smile and achieved above that goal! Alayna and Maddy also graciously accepted my serving challenges! Congrats goes out to them with also being part of our top servers!!
Hot hands award goes to Sierra and Alayna for setting it up all day!! Our team got them involved in a lot of plays!!
Hustle award goes out to Abby, Maddy and Summer; they hustled in to save us many times and finished out a play to give us side outs!
Congrats to our entire front row players (anyone who played in the front row) with some amazing plays at the net from Alayna's tips, a beautiful back set from Sierra, controlled passes from Isabel, kills from Summer and many others!
Team Spirit award- support felt from everyone of our little Avocados!!
12 BLACK
This weekend, 12 Black played in the Blaze Battle at the new Community First Champion Center. We started out the day playing a solid Fox Cities Elite team, which was a good challenge for us. We lost to them in two sets, but then came back to win our next three matches of the day! Overall, we ended up finishing in third place. The girls showed a lot of hustle throughout the day and never gave up during long rallies! It was a lot of fun to watch them play competitively and we are looking forward to our next tournament!
12 RED
For the 2nd consecutive event, our girls won our tournament at Center Court on Sunday. During the course of the day, our girls continued to work on serving aggressively, hitting their spots, and pushing the pace of action from the back line. Our setters continue to get all of our hitters involved and our serve receive was particularly sharp. We did start the day slowly in terms of effort, but the girls responded to the coaches' instruction to push themselves and play the game the right way. This led to consistently dominating play the rest of the day. Overall the girls had a great weekend that started with a day of sledding on Saturday (Thanks to the Daute family!) and continued camaraderie all day on Sunday.
It's wonderful to see how much these kids like being around each other and it has certainly led to an enjoyable season full of incredible examples of being great teammates, endless laughs, and girls playing for the team instead of just themselves. It also helps when they win; 14-3 record overall, with those 3 losses being good matches against great teams.
13 RED
Then 13’s Red team took a huge leap forward this weekend in Fond Du Lac! Everyone was extremely focused on their defensive positioning and always being ready for the ball, leading to some awesome volleys. Our middles had some great blocks and won many jousts! Overall our serving was very consistent and tough too!
#Shoutout to Nora on her 14-point serving run to help the team to a 15-1 win in a third set!!!
The 13’s Red team won the silver bracket, which is a great step up from winning bronze in Minneapolis a few weeks ago! The coaches cannot wait to see how much more learning and growing they can do!
14 RED
14 Red broke through in a big way this past weekend with their first tournament victory of the season! Going undefeated in match play and winning 12 of 13 sets, the girls showed a lot of poise and determination at the Blaze Battle in Appleton. Throughout the day is was a combination of solid volleyball, focus on the little things, and sheer will to finish the job. Very proud of this team!
#ShoutOut to the girls AND parents for the sustained energy throughout a long but rewarding day! Big things ahead!
15 WHITE
One week later we returned to Fond du Lac. Same place, same gym, but a totally different performance.
The team was not able to repeat the great performance of the previous weekend. Our two opponents in the group phase were very different. The first one had taller and more athletic players, but with similar skills than us. Their physical superiority imposed some challenges to our passers and hitters creating some instability on the team’s moral. At moments, we were able to compete, but we could not sustain the pace throughout the whole match.
On our second match, we played a team with similar skill/physical level, maybe a little below us. Unfortunately, the frustrations of the first match were not left behind. We started the match with low confidence and motivation. We struggled to find our game and sustained it throughout the match. Even though we were able to close some gaps during the sets, the opponent team played most of the time ahead of us, allowing them to play with more confidence and less stress.
The afternoon section started with a strong victory. The team imposed the rhythm from the beginning to the end. The happiness and satisfaction of playing was back. But that did not carried into our last match of the day, where we ended up defeated by a team that could have been defeated.
Even though the results of the weekend were the ones that we expected, the girls show moments of high performance, specially the ones that were not 100% physically.
15 RED
The 15 Red team competed in a 10 team invite in Fond Du Lac this weekend.
Although the team was short handed, players were willing to step up and play at a high level throughout the day. After finishing pool play with no team scoring more then 15 points against them, the team dominated in the semi finals and moved on to play Eclipse for the championship. Coming out and playing fast and basically flawless volleyball, I AM crushed in game 1 winning 25-9. The Eclipse team put up a good fight in game 2, but could not handle the power of I AM.
As a coach, I was most impressed with our pace of play throughout the day. We were playing much fast then every team in the tournament and never slower our game down. Many individual efforts created a great day for the team and we are definitely prepared for the qualifier next weekend.
I do have to make a few shout outs - Natalie and Meredith continue to have very consistent passing that we never want to take for granted!! Lilly and Jennacy continue to be dominant in their roles. Our setters - Sidney and Emily are keeping a balanced offense and continue to exceed expectations.
#ShoutOut to Grace who played her 1st tournament at middle and played exceptionally well! Super proud of her performance!
Clarissa showed that she can also be a dominant outside for us and hit the hardest ball of the season out of the back row in the championship match. WOW! Nothing was given to this team this weekend, they just took what they wanted! Way to play as a team girls.
I AM impressed!!!!!!!!
16 RED
We played up in a 17's tournament at UW Whitewater this weekend and we played with some serious grit! Our ultimate goal was to play our own 17's team in the finals and we needed to win our pool to have that chance. We won our first match in 3 in very close game going extra points in the 3rd game. We pulled it off with an Ace from Kira Guse! This propelled us into playing great volleyball for the rest of the day. We swept the next two matches and we were in the semifinals against talented Rock 16's team. We won 28-26 and 25-17. We got to our goal to play the 17's! Even though we were lat at first in both sets we finished strong to make it a fun match to watch! Congrats to our 17's for their win and a great day for the 16's!
17 RED
17 Red finished 1st overall in the UW-Whitewater Open 17's division on Sunday. Overall we were 5-0 overall and did not drop a set all day. It was a great tournament for us as we saw some growth defensively. We were getting to more balls than we have been all year because we were more disciplined on our defensive positioning. We showed grit in the semi-final match against EVC-17's as we found ourselves down 8-17 in the 2nd set and came back to win 25-23.
We had the opportunity to play our very talented I AM 16-Red team in the championship. This match was a lot of fun and very competitive. 16-Red showed a lot of heart closing the gap on some early leads we had, but in the end 17-Red was able to win 25-23, 25-20.
Up next for 17'Red is March 1st at the 18's division of the Junior Pride Tournament in Pleasant Prairie.