We played a grading round last night at AUT. It was organised into 30 minute refereed games to sort the teams into B and C grades.
Luckily, the organisers changed the draw before we started, so that we weren’t going to play the team we were originally paired with for the first game. They are definitely C grade and we are definitely B grade. One of the girls on the other team asked if we could not spike at them. I think it’s a fair request. The team we ended up starting against had no problems with spikes, giving or receiving. We won the games pretty easily, but we did notice a few places where we need to work harder and cover better.
For the next half hour, one of the teams had only two players, so we filled in the spaces so that we wouldn’t cool down too much before our last game. It was pretty relaxed, keeping moving instead of focussing on quality. We ended up playing that same team, but a little more formally, for the last game since the team we were supposed to play didn’t show up. There wasn’t a lot of challenge there, but it was a lot of fun anyway. They were definitely winning in terms of volume and enthusiasm.
The best part of the night came after the final whistle blew. Instead of leaving right away, we agreed to help take down the nets if we could keep going for a while longer. It was the 6 Monkeys and the girl that is playing on our beach volleyball team, 3 on 4.
Having so much more court to cover is a lot of work, and slowly, a few of the monkeys grew tired and drifted off. Shortly after 10:00, we had settled onto a game of full-court two on two. As far as I’m concerned, nothing gets a person moving more than absolute necessity. With that much court to cover, there isn’t time to stop moving, and definitely no room for miscommunication.
We finished up when exhaustion took over. Sets were nice and high, but jumps were sinking lower and lower. Finally, by about 10:30, we were done and the nets came down.
It’s been an age since I worked that hard on a volleyball court, but it was a great boost of confidence with the tournament this weekend. I hope to put this all to good use.
