Sunday 5th August came after a long night/morning watching the Volleyroos eventually go down to Italy in 5 sets. So some of us looked a little tired. We were also missing a few people as the AVL women were playing in Canberra.
Mens Honours (to come)
Womens Honours (to come)
Mens Div 1 Team 1 (by Jarek)
With Olympic volleyball fever in the air, inspired by Australia taking 2 sets off the fancied Italians the night before, UTS returned to Homebush for the 2nd half of the SVL season full of vim and vigour.
Unfortunately our presence on court, was a tamer beast than anticipated. Rather than roaring, we meowed meekly, and didn’t put the Sydney Uni team under the required pressure, allowing them to dictate. We quickly found ourselves a set down.
An unhappy coach, questioned why our ebullience and zest had been replaced with such timid play. The game plan for the second set was to play it simple, play it smart and above all play hard and put Sydney Uni under enough pressure to stop them from playing.
It worked. We were a different team, the good Dr Jekyll had replaced the Mr Hyde of the first set. Aggressive serving put Sydney on the back foot from the get go, our defence was solid and our spiking showed that not only we were more than capable of winning the game, there is a reason that we’ve taken sets off the best teams in this league this season.
They say that Volleyball is a thinking man’s game, unfortunately sets 3 & 4 were a concrete example of not playing the right mental game. After explicit instruction NOT to tip over the block, you can guess what happened next….the same play time and again, with a success rate of 2/14.
Over complicating our setting only compounded the problems. Mr Hyde was back, and we ended up losing the match.
The solution is clear. When we have the right mind-set, we can and will win. If not, we simply end up shooting ourselves in the foot…..with a bazooka.
Mens Div 1 Team 2 (by George)
Round 6 saw us battle it out against BHV Khalsa, who were equal 2nd on the ladder with us at the midpoint of the season. This week we were missing Lucas and Lionel due to overseas travel, and Luke was unavailable due to work commitments, whilst Coach Marielle was away playing WAVL with UTSSU. Due to the number of absentees, we had an invited guest player from SNV-Willoughby, Richard Wolken. As a result of injury, Andy originally planned to attend just to sit on the bench, but the excitement of the match took the better of him and he ended up playing a great game for us. We took the first set 25-22 against our younger rivals, with Nigel playing some great middle plays and some strong blocking. In the 2nd set Cris was unstoppable through the middle, but BHV ended up taking the set 25-20. In the 3rd Richard, Riu and Ric played a great attacking game, whilst libero Tony covered the backcourt with precision, giving us a convincing 25-19 set. In the 4th our passes let us down giving Michael nothing to set, and as we started to tire, the youngsters took the set 25-22. The 5th set decider started off close, but in the dying minutes BHV managed to race away and win 15-10 to take the match. At the end of the game we were all physically wrecked, having played our first 5 set match at SVL in just under 2 hours, but we walked away knowing we gave it a good shot. Result: BHV-K def UTS2 3:2.
Women’s Div 1 (to come)
UTS Volleyball Club 
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