Hopefully the title caught your eye and made you wonder what is he writing about this time. The 18's recently played in our second tournament of the year at Moravian College. It was set up to be a good tournament to test us against two old rivals. First we had to deal with J-STROKE who caused us lots of trouble last year. The match up lived up to it's billing and of course all sets were close. We won the first set 25-21 dropped the second 25-22 and the third set we pulled out 15-13. Our second match we played CAVA 17's and won in two sets. Our next grudge match was against the host team CAVA 18's. We had beaten them several times last season and we already beat them at MLK this year so we knew that they were looking for some revenge. We ran into a team that played a perfect match. They served well, hit well ,blocked well and played unbelievable defense. On the other hand we played okay and that was not going to work against this team during this match. They handled us 25-12 and 25-11. With the loss we finished second in the pool and third seed going into the playoffs.

We played CROSS COURT in the quarter finals and won that match fairly easily 25-18. Next we played another CAVA team in the semi-finals. We jumped out to a huge lead and at one point led by ten points before we had a bit of a break down and lost 26-24. We could have rolled over and just quit but we played a close second set but dropped it 25-21. Some people would say a loss in the semi's would be a good day but as a team we have set goals that are not measured with ribbons and trophies but how we play. We know we can play better.

After each tournament the coaching staff and team spend sometime discussing what happened at the previous tournament. We go over statistics and how we can improve in the areas we keep stats. (passing digging serving hitting and blocking). More importantly we go over how we played as a team and how to improve on what we do well and sometimes try to change what is not working. Now to the RA part of the article. RA refers to RA RA. As a player and referee for over twenty years and being a male for even longer than that I never quite understood all the cheering involved in girls' volleyball. I mention this because in our post tournament meeting our energy level or lack of in our case was discussed. Much to my surprise it was John who said he thought it was important for our team to do more cheering after every play not just the good ones. He thought it was so important that he gave the girls sometime at the end of practice to work on some cheers. So if you come out to watch us play in DC do not be surprised to see the coaching staff with pom poms because we want to lead by example.