First home match day

C team against Eneryda

On the third advent, last Sunday (12/12) was the first home match day for the Gothia Herr C team in Div 3 Södra Herrar. We were facing Eneryda and Westan in Valhalla hall C here in Göteborg. Our highly motivated squad consisting of Abe, Erik, Elias, Shi, Emilio, Manos, Jesse, Victor, Jarl and Trent. 

In the first match of the day, we were facing Eneryda - a team with some good spikers and a few younger talents. We had a good start but lost the contact to our opponent in the middle. Especially strong jump serves proved to be difficult for us to control. Picking up a few too many individual errors costed us the first set 14:25. Trying to keep the spirit up and pushing the team from the bench with some positive chants, we went in the second set with all we got. Again falling behind quite far 2:8, we managed to come back and stayed just two points behind until the end of the set not quite getting a set point (23:25). The third set with a slightly changed setup, we tried to turn the game around. The strong serves of our opponents gave us a hard time and eventually the game was lost 0:3 (14:25, 23:25, 15:25).

After a break in which Eneryda beat Westan 3:1, the last game came up against a direct competition in the league table - Westan. We missed our main libero due to being sick. So, Amir helped out and switched in this role to get a more used setup and giving our middles some rest. The first set was very balanced with more consistent serves on our side and good energy. We managed to get some spikes in the court and points went back and forth. Unfortunately, some avoidable errors made us come out short and lose 21:25. The spirit and energy seemed to be broken after this tight first set. Our serve-receive fell apart a bit and we fell behind 10 points right from the start in the second set. Trying to push the motivation, we did not come back from that and lost 13:25. The last set was unfortunately a copy of the second and also was lost early on melting away the faith in a come back. Overall, we didn't manage to win a set and the game ended 0:3 (21:25, 13:25, 10:25).

As it is said: "You learn more from your losses than from your victories." We learned a lot this day and that we really need to improve our control on the ball and not lose our positive attitude and team spirit even when it looks grim. In both matches, we had the opportunity to win at least a set and got quite close. The last bit of eagerness, fighting spirit and maybe luck was just missing.

Next game will come in January with a new opportunity to secure a win and play some solid three touch volleyball.

Coach Thomas