National Volleyball League - Division W2N
Saturday 8th February 2020 Tameside 2 Leicester Athena 3 (23-25, 25-22, 25-27, 25-12, 12-15) Leicester Athena travelled North to Manchester, to play against Tameside VC for the first time this season. They took with them 7 players and 1 coach with neither of their 2 libero players available to make the journey. Athena edge the first set In the first set, Athena started with Sarah setting, Amy and Kristy as outside, Karolina and Alex through middle, and Adela as opposite. In true Athena fashion, they got themselves to a 6-1 deficit. As we were just warming up, this continued until a second timeout was called by Coach Gordon at 12-20. This seemed to be the motivation that we needed to really get our head in the game properly. Kristy then started serving at point 13 and continued until Tameside called a timeout at 23-21. Backed up by the rest of her team, Kristy continued to serve until we won the set 25-23. Tameside even things up Gordon kept the same line-up in the 2nd set as the 1st, and this time round, Athena didn’t give Tameside the lead they wanted. Throughout the set, the movement and communication on Athena’s side of the court was much better than the 1st set. However, this could also be said to be the same for Tameside. They brought on a different and clearly more experienced middle player who caused us issues within our defence, however she was very closely matched with the likes of Karolina through our middle. The entire set was neck and neck, with timeouts being called by both teams at 20:20, 22:22, and 22:24. However, Tameside got the final 25th point, and the game scores were reset to 1:1. Athena win third set cliff-hanger In the 3rd set, Petra was brought on as an opposite for Adela. Although Petra plays as an opposite player at her university, she has not played as an opposite with Athena for over 2 years and is most commonly an outside player. This however, didn’t seem to phase anybody. Having started the set with a 6-0 lead, thanks to Alex’s controlled and accurate serving, which continued until Tameside called a timeout at 2:11. This seemed to spur them on, however we were able to fight them off to the next technical timeout. We continued our day full of great serving, with Sarah serving 5 points to take us ahead of the opposition. This combined with some great back court defence thanks to our newly back court middle players, we managed to close the set out 27-25. Once more, Tameside roar back in the fourth We kept the same line-up for the next set, however our communication and defence just wasn’t in the game like it had been before. Tameside had changed their setter and were picking up a lot of the scrappy points. We had some good moments in this set, including some amazing defence work from Amy, but the set finished 25-12, making the scores of the game even once again at 2:2! Athena win in 5! We decided to leave the last set in the past where it well and truly belonged! Having received first service once again, we gained an initial lead, followed by swapping courts at 8:7. Throughout this set, you could see the wish and desire in people’s eyes to win this game as the service kept swapping sides after 1 point each. A Tameside timeout was called at 7:11, where Coach Gordon advised us to change our defence strategy as Tameside were constantly tipping the ball into our centre court catching us out. Therefore, our back court middle player was changed to stand in the middle of the court with 1 job only – pick up those tips! This worked, and we sailed through the rest of the set to win 15-12. Sarah wins her first MVP of the season To say the team were happy about winning was an understatement! There have been many times this season where this team have been so close to winning games, but have lost out at the very last minute, leaving them proud of their accomplishments, but disappointed at the same time. This was well and truly something to feel accomplished by, and has proved to be one of the best game they have played so far. Congratulations to our Captain, Sarah, for gaining her first MVP nomination of the season. However, further congratulations go out to the rest of the team for believing and trusting in each other both on and off court. They move onto play Manchester Marvels next Saturday, 15th February at home. Thank you to Martin Henfield of Manchester for the use of his amazing photographs. See more of his work on Flickr by clicking here.
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