The 2020 club is officially underway as the 18's traveled north to play Plymouth. Being a scrimmage, there was no score kept (wink wink) but the coaches felt they won every segment of the two hour competition. Stats are over in the blog in the "CIViC Home" drop down. A couple of observations after looking at stats and eight minutes of film.
1.) The team served well. When a person says a team served well, it has three connotations. The first is they did not miss too many serves. That is a great thing all by itself. The second is a little more focused. They served well to zone allowing them to attack a poor passer or a poorly designed serve receive or a swing hitter making it hard for her to get into her offense. Third is they scored a lot of aces. Keep in mind that aces could be "good" serving or poor passing. At Plymouth, the 18's had 21 aces and 6 errors. Yup. That is serving well. Ace-to-error ratio is 3.5:1. Every server was at minimum 2:1, which is really solid, other than P. Jones at 1.5:1. That is still pretty good. Tip of the Cap to M. McMains for six aces with only a single error.
2.) Whoa! There is work to be done with our offense. Other than K. Hammonds (7-3/20= .200), the rest of the girls hit zero or negative. The injury to M. Viney forced us to play two girls at opposite that are not use to being back there. We have two athletic but slightly undersized outside hitters. At least early on, the middles have to carry the water. M.McMains having eight hitting errors is unacceptable.
3.) The team passed well in receive. A. Borden was 33/20= 1.65. P. Jones was 27/12= 2.25. M. McMains was 18/9= 2.0. L. Schriner was 16/9= 1.78. Yup, those are really nice numbers. However, we need to be realistic. P. Jones passing 2.25 or M. McMains passing 2.0 is not going to be the norm. At the other end I do not think Kelsey is going to be aced three times out of 5 receives and pass 1.0 too often. If we can stay in this ball park, we will be competitive in a lot of matches.
4.) Our defense needs some work. Remember it was the first competition. Still, the film showed some poor spacing, ineffective footwork, which contributes to poor spacing, and slow transitions. Defensive spacing is a relatively easy fix. It comes with reps.
All-in-all, it was a good opening day of play.
2.) Whoa! There is work to be done with our offense. Other than K. Hammonds (7-3/20= .200), the rest of the girls hit zero or negative. The injury to M. Viney forced us to play two girls at opposite that are not use to being back there. We have two athletic but slightly undersized outside hitters. At least early on, the middles have to carry the water. M.McMains having eight hitting errors is unacceptable.
3.) The team passed well in receive. A. Borden was 33/20= 1.65. P. Jones was 27/12= 2.25. M. McMains was 18/9= 2.0. L. Schriner was 16/9= 1.78. Yup, those are really nice numbers. However, we need to be realistic. P. Jones passing 2.25 or M. McMains passing 2.0 is not going to be the norm. At the other end I do not think Kelsey is going to be aced three times out of 5 receives and pass 1.0 too often. If we can stay in this ball park, we will be competitive in a lot of matches.
4.) Our defense needs some work. Remember it was the first competition. Still, the film showed some poor spacing, ineffective footwork, which contributes to poor spacing, and slow transitions. Defensive spacing is a relatively easy fix. It comes with reps.
All-in-all, it was a good opening day of play.