SVL Week 9

The second last week of rounds at SVL was on 26 August. You can certainly feel the tension building for those who are on the edge of finals contention.

Honours Men (by Rob)
UTS faced Dragons this week in an important game in determining final placings on the table. The Frenchies arrived at the stadium with minutes to spare, blaming their lack of punctuality on a beached as whale. A slightly sluggish start by UTS saw the game Drag-on for a couple of sets, with each team taking one set apiece. This would have been a perfect time for some trash talk through the net between the Laffer brothers, playing on opposing teams – a classic libero vs setter show down – but it was not to be. Jason instead let his game do the talking, with another strong passing performance. With this kind of passing, everyone on court and both spectators thought that the UTS middles would be getting plenty of ball. However, with Sam drawing a triple block in the middle (despite not receiving a single set all game), Sucky had no choice but to send perfect sets out wide, much to Gregor’s delight, who notched up the first clean kill of his career. (Must have been a miss-hit??). Andrew “I’ve been playing volleyball for more years than the combined ages of all the Dragons” Lyall put away an overpass on his first touch, whilst Doug “guess who’s back” Skinner could only laugh after getting roof blocked on his first spike attempt. A highlight of the game came when a sleeping spectator was hit with a stray ball and literally almost knocked him off his chair. UTS finished the third and fourth sets well and emerged as 3-1 winners. In his post-match team talk, Coach Morky told the boys “Today we played the way that we want to play all games – the middles didn’t get set much…” (quote may or may not have been taken out of context).

Honours Women (to come)

Div 1 Men – Team 1 (by Keith)
We had rather a frustrating game.  We put together some very good points but ultimately went down 3:0 as Dragons were able to dictate terms.  Some very safe play during the first set saw a low error rate but not enough pressure put on our opponents. The second set saw us start more aggressively, and we were looking good until two thirds of the way through the set. Unfortunately a run of soft errors saw us fall out of contention.  The third set was a bit of a disaster with some very basic mistakes made. Some good attack and defensive work from the improving Yury, combined with some solid serving and work at the net from Jerrome & Jarek were the highlights.

Div 1 Men – Team 2 (by George)
Round 9 was our team reunion game with several players returning from international volleyball commitments. We played against the younger Sydney University Gold team and won in 3 straight sets, 25:16, 25:19, 25:21 to retain our 3rd spot on the ladder. With Tony out, Lionel took over as libero master and passed with 100% accuracy, but in the 3rd set needed a hit so Riu wore the black shirt with confidence. Nigel put on an excellent display through the middle with some great quicks and managed to do some roof blocks, much to the delight of Bruna who hadn’t seen him play in weeks. Luke was unstoppable from the outside and had 100% kills from the backrow. Lucas didn’t show any signs of jetlag and managed to get back into form with some great hitting when needed. Michael set perfectly all match and our passing was the best in a long time, which kept Coach Marielle very happy. Overall, a good win as we head towards the finals. Result: UTS2 def SydUni-G 3:0

Div 1 Women (to come)