Thursday, July 2, 2009

Personal Bests & High Notes

Let's be honest, there's always one more mountain to climb. If you win bronze in club, there's silver. If you win silver, there's gold. If you win gold in club, there are the open divisions. If you win an open championship, heck, you still don't have an Olympic gold medal yet, do you? And more than likely, none of the players we've been cheering ourselves hoarse for will ever reach the very, very, very top of this game.

Depressed yet? Please don't be.

Winning is great. Winning is a blast. Winning is what every player should try to do on every play. But volleyball is not all about winning it all. In swimming and track, you often hear reference to a "PB," which means a swimmer or runner achieved a personal best. And while there's no direct volleyball equivalent, we'd like to spend this post recognizing teams and players who achieved personal bests or ended their club seasons (or club careers) on a high note, whatever that might be.

Maybe it's a thrilling, three-set, 18-16 victory in a bronze playoff like PoWer Sauk 16 Royal experienced at JVDAs. Perhaps it's just the class and dignity with which some 18-year-olds finished their club careers with a loss on a consolation court. We want to hear some stories. And we'll get things started by listing some teams that ended their seasons on a high note by winning final day playoffs (please let us know if we're overlooking anyone):

JVDA
GIRLS JOVC
Now it's your turn. Sing the praises of an overachieving 15-year-old team. Tell us about some incredible effort that a 17-year-old team made even though they were down big and had no chance of winning a match. We're looking for those stories that have been slipping through the cracks but deserve to be heard. And we'll donate $5 to Special Olympics Wisconsin for every positive comment we get about a personal best or a high note from these recent championships. So whatcha got for us?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

PoWer Sauk County 16 Royal had a great run. Over the four days they lost three matches, two of those in three games to the SAME silly Sky High Red team and one in two to the ever present Milwaukee Sting.
This is basically a group of kids no one has heard much about until John Tawa recognized, Samantha Schultz as a Defensive Dandie and followed it up by giving her the "best Passer award" at the Prep Classic. Then he slated Hailie Ripley as a "player to watch" ironically they one the Bronze at prep over the same WI Juniors team they beat in the semi's of bronze at JVDA's. Coming from schools like, Dodgeland, Cambria-Friesland, Barababoo to name a few the Louisville experience was a great cap to a great season.

Thanks Cheese and Volleyball for what you do here!

VBuberalles said...

Received the following via e-mail:

Here is a great story about Capital 13 Nike FM.

We entered the 13 Club Division ranked 30th out of 40 teams. At the end of pool play on day one we were in a three –way tie for first place with the 10th and 11th ranked team. We were able to claim 1st place in the pool by a slim margin of 2 points. This guaranteed us finish no lower than 24th place.

We were involved in another three-way tie on the second day, but for 2nd place. We won both playoffs sets and earned second place in the pool. This guaranteed us a finish no lower than 12th place.

We finished 3rd in the pool on the third day of competition and had to settle for the silver bracket.

We lost their first match in the semi-finals on the fourth day and won the consolation match. Our final finish was 11th place! The experience that our girls got by participating in this tournament was tremendous. Talk about a game of breaks, momentum, luck and play your best. We had fun and everlasting memories!

Franco

Anonymous said...

River City 15's tied for 5th in the Gold Club Division. They only lost three matches, one being to KIVA (former JVDA Champions), one to Sports Performance, and one to JVDA 2009 Champion MAVA. River City was told they gave KIVA their first set loss, and was their first oppenent to get over 15 points. River City eventually lost the match in three sets, with the final set being 15-13. All of their loses were hard fought, and the expereience was a great one. For girls that play for a small club, with very little club expenses, this was a huge success not only for the girls, but for the club! Way to go River City!

Anonymous said...

Milwaukee Sting 18 black finished on a high note on Tuesday. They won the Silver division in the 18 club division at JVDA championships. During the past month, they saw two of their players quit but the remaining players gave it their all and decided to compete at Louisville. They added 2 players who more than filled the void . Thank you to the players who gave and showed "their competitiveness" in the 8 matches (6 wins and 2 losses) that they played. Congrats to-- Christie, Leah, Morgan, Jamie, Sammie, Mariska, Korina, Brianne and Mollie and Coaches Steph and Rob for an exciting 1st place in Silver!!!