The second half of the OUA volleyball season officially got underway last weekend.
However, digesting the results from the women’s Varsity Blues volleyball team makes one wonder whether the players were still shaking off leftover turkey from the holidays. It appeared that the team needed to be “bump”-started.
The team went into the winter break on a hot streak, winning four of their past five matches. But over the weekend, the Blues only managed to take one set total from its games versus Brock and Ottawa.
Friday night, the Blues took on the Brock Badgers, a team Toronto has owned over the years. But this time, the Badgers bit back playing extremely good all-around volleyball, handing the Blues their first loss in the new year, 3-1 (25-10, 19-25, 25-17, 25-16).
While pleased her team won the second set after blown out in the opening, Blues head coach Kristine Drakich was disappointed Toronto didn’t make Brock fight more for the win.
“It wasn’t a good day for us all around. I don’t think there was anything that went really well for us,” said Coach Drakich. “But we have to be able to pull out a game or two. This should have went to five, I don’t know if we would have won as Brock was playing great, but […] we should have started stronger [and] made a better match out of it.”
Drakich points to the executional errors in her team’s servers and outside hitters as the biggest culprits. The Blues finished with 26 attack errors and six serving errors, compared to just 13 and four for the Badgers.
“It made it difficult for us to run an offence […] and everyone on the floor seemed to be worried about what was behind them, the last play, and not just what’s right there in front of them,” she said.
Drakich wants her players to keep playing their game regardless of what it says on the scoreboard, instead of letting errors dictate their play.
“We played very timid, we seemed to play defensively […] Part of what we do well is attack strongly. We want to keep doing that whether it’s serving or blocking.”
The Blues were missing the OUA’s 12th leading scorer in Dianne Burrows due to injury, but Drakich wasn’t about to bail her players out with excuses.
“I have never seen some players play as poorly as they did here, so I’d like to think that it’s really just that we weren’t prepared to play,” she said. “And we should be able to play with any lineup out there.”
Drakich’s words clearly had not sunk in on Sunday as the team played in Ottawa against the Gee Gees, and were quickly disposed of in three straight sets (25-21, 25-17, 25-21).
Brock (8-4) currently sits at a surprising third in the OUA’s West Division, within striking distance of Western (11-1) and McMaster (10-2) for first. Ottawa’s (10-3) victory over Toronto (6-6) helped them keep up their fight for the top spot in the East Division. That perch, usually occupied by the Varsity Blues over the past years, is now kept warm by the undefeated York Lions (11-0).
The Lions take on the Blues tonight at 6 p.m. in the Athletic Centre Sports Gym. A win by the Blues over their hated rivals would not only snap the Lions’ perfect record, but surely would restore any confidence lost from the past weekend.
