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)
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.
UTS Volleyball Club 
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