National League Division 3C
Sunday 20th January 2019 Leicester Athena 3 Telford 0 After an already hectic morning playing against Loughborough Students in the first game of our home triangular fixture, Leicester Athena had to prepare again for another match against Telford Ladies for the 3rd fixture of the day. At our last home game, the pause in between games turned out to be detrimental to our own mentality – meaning we were slow to get our heads into the match before. We weren’t going to let that be the case again for this match. Athena makes a strong start In the first set, Athena started with: Paulina setting, Alysia opposite, Diana and Petra outside, Kristy and Tereza through the middle with Algi as our trusted libero once again. The girls rocketed off to a great start, with pressure coming from our service, Telford struggled to get their first pass to the setter meaning a lot of their attacks were coming from off the net and weren’t as powerful as they had wished. By far the most outstanding moment of the set was the constant serving, receiving, and hitting by Tereza. She served for 7 points and every receive she took during this round of service was beautifully passed right to the setter. This meant that Athena could do what they do best – dig, set, hit, and Telford just couldn’t keep up. Athena won the first set 25-6. Athena take control The line-up for the second set was kept the same by Coach Gordon, who decided it was best to keep the momentum from the first set going. At this point, Telford raised the level of their game, and although they tried to place the ball in the corner of our court to catch us out – this didn’t mean much as majority of the time it was covered by Kristy or Algi anyways. With every pass that came in, Paulina was able to beautifully set it to exactly the right place so it could be killed with style and Telford definitely underestimated the hitting power of both Diana and Petra. The end of the set finished with an absolutely cracking shot from Diana – hitting the ball straight through the blockers hands and right onto the floor before anyone had the time to blink. The second set finished 25-22. Three and out! The 3rd set was once again kept the same, though Adela did come on for Alysia during the middle of this set. Athena were fighting hard, running on motivation and adrenaline, wanting to end the game then and there, and therefore taking the 3-0 win for themselves. Our passing unit once again were doing fantastically, picking up every ball that wasn’t already covered by the block, making it an easy job for Paulina to set so one of the hitters could kill the ball. A fantastic moment (though maybe it shouldn’t have happened in the first place!) was when a miscommunication happened between Kristy and Petra, meaning Petra had to dive “for her life” across the front of the net and still managed to get the ball back up so Paulina could set it (but luckily not to Petra again who was still on the floor!), which of course became Athena’s point. The set went quickly, with Athena squeezing out every last point they could. It really showed as Tereza was libero’d off in the backcourt for Algi at point 8, and only returned front court again at point 24! Of course, Athena won the set 25-12. Tereza's MVP award Massive congratulations goes out to Tereza, who bagged herself her first MVP vote of the season! It really was well and truly deserved. Once again it was another double home victory, and even better than last time as both games of the day were 3-0. These 2 wins mean that we are now placed 3rd in the W3C League, with 2 games in hand on the teams in 1st and 2nd place. Our next game is on the 10th February in Coventry – a game which should put us into 2nd place if we win both. Match report by Sarah
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
August 2023
Categories
All
|