SVL Week 5

Sunday 29th July saw us pass the half way mark of the SVL regular competition.  And as a bonus, we get to bask in the glow of the lit cauldron outside the Sports Halls.

Honours Men (update by Morky)
The UTS honours men suffered their first loss of the year, going down to last year’s gold medallist, Vostok.
In the first set, inconsistent passing and serving let the team down. This was improved throughout the game, but in its place came inconsistent hitting.
Jack Tutty led the way for Vostok, with his 2.05m frame and great reach, both in blocking and hitting.
In what proved to be an epic battle, UTS went down in 5 sets, 24-22 in the fifth, thanks largely to a yellow card on match point for a shoe lace violation on Captain Rob Fleury.
Not a fitting end to the match, with neither team being happy with the way it ended.

Honours Women had a bye this week

Mens Div 1 Team 1 (by Stan)
Coming into Round 5 without a win, the Div 1 Mens team was keen to get on the board and came out confidently in the first set against Sydney Uni. Some all round confident team play, highlighted by strong hitting from Igor and consistent passing from libero Yahya saw us take out the first set. We began well in the second set, but Sydney Uni began to build confidence as the set went on and some unforced errors on our side and the other team going for the ball much harder saw us lose the second set by a close margin. We came into the third set determined to strike back but a number of errors on the net as well as some strong play from Sydney Uni saw us sink to 5-15 before we even knew what was happened. We mounted a comeback and looked strong when we put the passes on the net but unfortunately could not come back from the huge deficit from earlier in the set and lost the third 25-18. In the final set, a slightly slow start saw us take the lead in the set with some strong blocking on the right side of the net with Igor particularly dominant. There was also some excellent running through the middle by Jerome and Alvin and Andrei came off the bench to provide some great winners with a mixture of strong hitting and tips into the right spots. Jerome served particularly strongly and we looked set to take the fourth, but some familiar errors with our passing and court position on defence became our undoing and Sydney Uni won a hard fought match, taking the fourth set 25-22.

Mens Div 1 Team 2 (by George)
This round saw both UTS Div 1 teams playing both Sydney University teams at exactly the same timeslot. Our team welcomed the return of our international business-men, Tony and Luke, whilst Lucas flew out to Brazil to do more recruiting for our international cast. The team came out all guns blazing to a stunned Sydney University B team, and the excitement of having everyone back on court seemed to carry us on a high for the whole match. Overall we had a comfortable win, with all players contributing their bit, much to the delight of coach Marielle . At the mid-point of the SVL season we are now 4 wins from 5 games. Result: UTS2 def Sydney University B 3:0.

Womens Div 1 (by Joey)
We had a relatively easy 3-0 victory today against a young Santa Sabina side. Courtney had a great game hitting many winners from the outside. Em proved that her overpass hit that resulted in a six pack last week was a fluke as she buried one into the net in the 2nd set. She did redeem herself in the 3rd set hitting an overpass winner. Oh and Rob Gasperic you owe the whole team shots as Bec served into the net on set point during the second set. To celebrate the win the whole team had some bonding time having lunch at Thai after our game. Well done ladies in finishing second in our pool as we move into the serious rounds starting next week

UTSSS Div 1 Women (Quote from Nam)
“We lost…”

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SVL Week 4

The fourth round of SVL 2012 was held on Sunday 22nd July.  I was an eventful weekend…some of it even volleyball related.

Men’s Honours (from Morky)
A depleted UTS Men’s honours team has continued its winning ways, defeating an also depleted Dragons team 3:0. Missing Captain Rob Fleury (romantic weekend away with his UGG-boots), The D-Factor, Dave Boettiger (away with Rob … or was he injured??) and the D-Skin, Doug Skinner due to back problems (Justine – you need to look after Douggie!), leaving Super Sub, and possibly the oldest man still alive playing volleyball, Andrew Lyell to man the bench. Coach Morky also added his name to the score sheet, just in-case he was required to dominate through the middle. After a master class on passing on Wednesday night, the 3 passers in Jason “I beat my brother again” Laffer, Gregor “the G-Spot” Salvin and Michael “I am at the right gym today” Jonstomp, had excellent performances, making up for the previous week. Setter, Sucky “Sucky” Suckling, managed to feed the outsides very well, and on the occasions where he set Artem “salted Cucumber” Ipatyev, either left him against no blocks or three blocks. Sam “I was captain again” Morrison and Aymeric “I am also at the right gym today” Jonstomp performed well as always.
At press time, captain Rob Fleury was unavailable for comment, but would have said ”Choice Bro”

Women’s Honours (to come)

Mens Div1 Team 1 (by Nithin)
Week 4 SVL UTS 1 vs Baulkam Hills Colts. Set 1 was a slow start for UTS, mainly lack of communication on court led to a loss. Set 2 started strong, but unfortunately was unable to convert to a win. Set 3 saw a marked improvement in team coordination resulting in a win. Set 4 had way too many errors both serving and serve reception. UTS1 loss 1-3.

Mens Div1 Team 2 (by George)
Round 4 was a top-of-the-table clash with UNSW, and a replay of our semi-final from Newcastle. We had several players absent due to travel/work commitments including Tony, Luke and Michael, whilst Andy is out with a back injury. Lucas did a great job filling in as setter and Nigel played his first full rotational role in the team as we didn’t play a libero. Riu came off a plane from Brazil and came straight to the stadium full of adrenalin and showed no sign of jetlag. The first set went to UNSW, but we managed to come back in the 2nd set for a strong win. The 3rd set was close but UNSW managed to take it out, and sadly we couldn’t regroup to control the 4th set. Some rough patches and some poor passing left Marielle pulling her hair out from the sideline. Some good lessons here for us all. Result: UNSW def UTS2 3:1.

Women’s Div 1 (by Jo)
Starting our game nearly an hour late we were keen to dispose of Syd Uni quickly and get out of the gym before darkness. The game started out as planned, winning the first 2 sets convincingly.
Sydney Uni stepped in up in the next 2 sets, serving aggressively and hitting the ball hard which we found hard to defend. Sydney Uni took out the match in 5 sets and we encounted our first loss of the season.
Game highlights included welcoming to the court Jess Reardon who played universal and was proving a headache for the opposition with a couple of massive blocks. Courtney enjoyed playing as an outside hitter instead of middle, and buried a couple of huge pipe sets in the process. Claire Walker had a great game hitting winners and finally realising that if she dived she actually might get the ball…great work Claire, must be the new red hair! Oh yes, and then there was Em Mattick’s huge overpass six pack but didn’t realise cause she was still amazed that she hit the ball over the net. Nice work Em!
Overall a good game with lots still to work on but many positives to take away. Next week we take on the Santa Sabina girls in the last game before the division gets split into two.

 

SVL 2012 Round 3

The third round of SVL 2012 was held on Sunday 15th July.  The UTS teams were again in action. Some players had just returned from uni games, while others had been training hard (including the first AVL trial).

Honours Men (by Morky)
UTS came up against a well prepared UNSW team, who had a game plan masterminded by super coach Damon Minotti.
In a first set that see-sawed, with both teams having half a dozen set points, UTS triumphed 33-31.
The second and third sets were completely dominated by UNSW, with superior serving, setting, hitting, blocking, defence and looks (except for the coaching staff).
The fourth set saw UTS make drastic changes to its passing line up, resulting in a very fluid offence that proved too hard for the UNSW boys to stop.
The fourth set also saw the realisation that Steve Neal was left handed and that blocking his right shoulder was very ineffective.
The fifth set went much the same as the fourth, with UTS building a comfortable lead, off the back of some good passing from Doug, Rob and Artem and excellent serving from Dave “the D-Factor” Boettiger.
Captain Rob Fleury was very pleased with his troops and gave a very inspirational speech at the end of the game, stating – “hey leds, thet was choice bro”
Final result UTS 3:2 (….winning ugly is better than losing ugly – Andrew Lyell)

Honours Women (by Gabes)
Round 3 saw the honours girls up against United who were also wearing the UTS colours. This however did not intimidate us, with a strong start saw us winning the first set quite convincingly 25-12. The Uniting girls showed signs of great defence in the first set that we knew we had to keep hitting hard and smart in order to try and beat them. The second set was a lot closer however with some strong serving by Bruna in particular we caught up to finally close out the set 28-26. Unfortunatly the third set did not go our way. Too many miss serves and individual defensive errors forced Lionel to use his 2 time outs to try and get us playing as a team again. In the fourth set our team captain Wendy went down after rolling her ankle. Luckily Lily had just finished playing for Santa and was willing to jump straight on court as we only has 7 players for the whole game. Even though Lily came out quite strong it was still a lack of team communication that saw us lose that forth set and then the fifth. We ended up losing the match but we are all looking forward to the rest of the team returing from oversease so we can get back into some tough training. Also thanks to Cat who filled in through the middle for her sister Carrie.

Div 1 Men Team 1 (by Keith)
After waiting around for the Honours guys to finally win their 5 setter against UNSW, the first set saw our guys a little outmatched by several of the UNSW players who had just stepped off the Honours court.  Needless to say, we played pretty well in all 3 sets, but couldn’t deliver the consistency. Although we went down 3 nil, there was some very hard fought points in there. Lee, Jerome and Alvin were strong in attack, with Nithin’s setting showing some good improvements. Gino stepped in to do a good job at libero as well.

Div 1 Men Team 2 (by George)

Nigel getting it done at the net

Round 3 saw a depleted team due to overseas travel by Tony, Luke and Riu. Marielle came straight off a plane from Paris, just in time to resume as coach and with a team of only 8, we managed to dazzle the South Coast boys with our new shiny white uniforms. Nigel returned to our team after some great training with UTS1 and made an impact through the middle. This week Lucas took the court as our 2nd setter and the team adjusted quickly to win the 1st set. The 2nd set saw us struggle, but then Cris took the court in Set 3 and was unstoppable through the middle. Andy and Lionel had some strong hitting from the outside thanks to Michael’s sets, whilst Ricky mastered the art of Libero and now threatens Tony’s role in the team. Result: 3-1 WIN UTS2 

Div 1 Women (by J0)
The div 1 women kept on their winning ways with a solid victory over a young Baulkham Hills team. Coach Sam wasn’t impressed with the second set (25-22) so the girls stepped in up in the 3rd set taking the match 3-0 to remain undefeated.

UTS SS C1 (by Nam)
The young guns showed again that they are serious contenders this year in the Div 1. Beating UNSW convincingly in the first 2 sets, unfortunately the team did what all junior teams love doing… Stressing out their coach! The team went down 25-6! The 4th set was patchy which resulted in the game going into the 5th deciding set. Facing 7 match points against them 14-8, the girls stayed strong and fought back point by point. Bryony Williams, who struggled with her serves over the few past years, pulled out the goods when it counted. Her strong serving combined with desperate defense from the rest of team leveled the score at 14-14. UNSW’s time was too little too late and the young girls from Santa Sabina finished off the last 2 points to win the match and retain their top ranking in the pool.

Eastern Uni Games 2012

On the 1st of july UTS sent a team of 7 to take on the contenders at this years Eastern Uni Games. The team consisted of Sam “big chief” Morrison, Igor “the bosnian bear” Mileusnic, James “pimpin” Mcrae, Sunny “GHD” Dhaliwal, Jason “casualty” Laffer, Owen “chicken legs” Hynes and Tommy “two shoes” Lee.

It was a fairly in experienced team with this being the first time playing together and the first game of volleyball owen and tom have played. The tournament was to consist of a double round robin against Cumberland, UNSW 1 and UNSW 2.

We made it through the preliminary undefeated. We only dropped 3 sets, 2 of which were due to a change of line up and expert setting from sam and igor. Our semifinal was to be against Cumberland. After a shaky and freezing 8am start we easily overcame cumbo to enter the final against UNSW 1.

During the preliminary rounds we had 2 hard games against UNSW 1 and were all keen for a tough game in the final. With some big hitting and even bigger blocking we easily defeated UNSW 1 in 4 sets to bring home the gold.

UTS also brought home the overall honours by 5 gold medals (read all about that here)

I would like to thank all the boys for a great week, especially owen and tommy who made it possible for us to go by filling numbers. They showed great improvement over a short time.

We now look forward to the Australian Uni Games in September.

UTSSU 2nd After Round 1 of WAVL 2012

Our Women’s Australian Volleyball League (AVL) team went away to Dandenong , VIC,  for round 1 over the weekend.

The girls came away with 3 wins and 2 losses, placing them 2nd on the ladder. There are some neat photos from the weekend here.

And if you haven’t already seen the WAVL 2012 poster…you might have noticed it featured our own Nat Frostick about to hammer a ball away.