Congratulations to Keystone Juniors 17s for receiving an American Bid for Junior Nationals.

They will be traveling to Reno,Nevada from June 26th thru July 1st to compete at the 2010 Junior Olympic Volleyball Championships.

This is such a great honor and accomplishment! Great job to the girls and Coach John and Coach Brian!

See Coach Brian's article (below)

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Greetings Volleyball Fans

   It has been a while since I have had a chance to write about our wild volleyball adventures but with spring comes my busy time of year and fortunately or unfortunately it is raining today and I have time to peck away at keyboard.

  Quick recap of the season :  it has been a real roller coaster ride with a solid start at MLK followed by a victory at the CAVA tournament,  a presidents day weekend in DC with a 9th place finish out of 49 teams, followed by a disappointing showing at the De Sales tournament, followed by a hard fought championship at the Mule Classic, then an eye opening experience over Easter weekend in Baltimore, then a disappointing result at the Dutchman Tournament followed by a mixed result in Minneapolis where we finished 19th out of 72 teams.  That is quite a ride but just as you think the ride is about to end there is still at least one more unseen twist or turn.

  That twist or turn was called the Keystone Region Bid Tournament held this past Sunday.  I hate using the roller coaster imagery again but it is hard to find any other image that works.  We started off the day with a fairly easy two set victory highlighted by the late appearance of our back up setter.  Then followed by an impressive victory over a scrappy CAVA team.  Then a rematch with a tough club from Pittsburg named Renaissance.  We came out on fire and took the first set and we were one set away from being in the semi-finals but then came set number two and we came out like ice and got crushed.  Then we lost a tight third set which led us to our next roller coaster ride because we now had a three way tie for the pool.  As we sat and waited for the tie breaker police to work their magic we got word that we would have to play "a play in game"  and then 10 minutes later we found out that we had indeed won the pool by winning percentage and were given a bye into the semi-finals.  The semi-finals gave us a chance to face an old foe in Valley Forge.  So far this year we have split the two matches against Forge so this was the rubber match with a BID for Junior Nationals on the line.  Once again a back and forth battle in the first two sets followed by dominating third set effort from our team and a hard earned victory against a gritty team.  Now on to the finals verses YORKTOWNE.
We faced them earlier this year and lost a tough three set match.  Both teams looked tired but both put forth a great effort and once again we found ourselves in a tough three set match that we ended up losing the third set 18-16. 

   While driving home I was wondering what kind of ride home it was for each family.  I know for one girl she could have floated home,  for several others I'm sure they were sound asleep before they hit route 30 and I'm sure some of our more talkative players were chatty all the way home.  Once again it was a great TEAM effort both at the tournament and at practice that has enabled us to get this far. 

B