1 and Oh

Well, volleyball was very fun last night. We won our match 2 games to none. We had to come back in the first game, which we weren't always able to do last year, but then had the second game under control for most of the time. The comeback in the first game came mostly while I was serving. This isn't to say that my serve was great though. My advantage was that the opposing team's worst player was in the center of the back row and I could easily keep hitting my serves there, which helped immensly.

Last week we had played around with a new strategy, one that, I believe, most real volleyball teams use. It is to have one person be the setter at all times. For those of you who don't know what the setter is (I didn't know until I started playing regularly last year) here you go:

Everyone probably knows the old volleyball adage, bump-set-spike. That's what you want to happen almost every time your team gets the ball. The person that the ball coming over the net to bump passes the ball towards a spot in the front row, the next person sets it up towards the net, and the hitter spikes it down on the other team. Normally, when just playing around anyone hits it at any point, it just depends on where the ball is hit. The key to our new found strategy last year was to set up a setter, some one who would always be that second person and set the ball up for the hitters. But we didn't go all the way to this new strategy that we tried last week, which is one person is the setter at all times. We made it so the center person in the front row is the setter. This means that as we rotate everyone gets a chance to set.

The thing we tried last week was, as I said, so that one person is the setter at all times, or in our case, one of two people. On our team are two girls that have played lots of volleyball and are more skilled than the rest of us. Having one setter is the way they've always played and since they can really set better, or at least better more consistantly, than us, they thought we could try the new way. Well, it didn't work, everyone was confused, people had extra and different assignments and we just didn't know what was going on. Plus, everyone except the two ladies got less touches because we never got a chance to be the setter, who hits the ball every play. So, to make it easier for us all, more fun for us all, and more fair for us all, we went back to having the front center person be the setter. Everyone was a lot happier and we ended up winning the game.