The road to a championship for the 7th/8th grade girls took a huge detour Sunday night when they were beaten for the second time in the regular season, 18-25, 25-19, 15-8.
Most observers figured it would be a two team race at the top, but it turns out that this entire league is pretty good, and almost any team can beat any team on any given night.
Serve a few balls the wrong way, miscommunicate a couple times, you're going to lose. The margin of error has become extremely thin.
After Edwena saved the girls in the first set with a flurry of hard serves, the girls fell apart in the second set and were never able to recover.
At one point, they held a 14-9 lead, but the other team ran off an 11-0 run, in which the girls could not break the other team's serve. It was lollipop serve after lollipop serve, but the girls were unable to spike the ball to push a point across. And even when they did, the other team had an answer.
The third set was back and forth early on with each team trading points until it was 3-3. Fiona had a chance to give the girls some momentum but her serve hit the net and from there, it was pretty much over.
Their opponent chipped away and extended themselves out to an 8-4 lead, and the rest was pretty much academic.
Faced against their toughest matchup of the season, the girls had no response for the other team's big tall girls who could spike it over the net. The 7th/8th grade (4-2) were on their heels the entire game, diving frantically all over the place just to keep play alive.
Since they were so busy doing that, they couldn't set up good bump, set and spikes on a consistent basis. Simply trading bumps was not going to win them the game.
And even when they did, the other team was able to fight off some tough spikes.
"Everyone played really bad today, everyone," Edwena said. "The ball came in between everyone and no one went for it."
The blame for nobody going for it comes with the lack of communication, a school-wide epidemic that needs to be stopped. Like the 5th/6th grade girls on Saturday, the 7th/8th grade girls had several balls hit the floor where everyone just turned and looked.
In one instance, two girls started going for the ball, but both stopped at the same time because they thought the other girl was going to get it. Neither girl said anything verbally, so the only thing everybody heard was the ball hit the gym floor followed by a cheer.
And that happened a little too much for a team that wants to win it all.
CELEBRITY SIGHTING: The Great Kaela was at the game along with her family to watch her former teammates.
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