Ballarat Tournament

Last weekend, a few Renegades made the trip to play a tournament in Ballarat. Here is a report of the div2 girls:

Ballarat Tournament 2010
Division Two Girls: 2nd Place
Coach: Eugene Woon

Our fourth game was perhaps our best game of the tournament. Despite the fact that one of the girls on Horsham had a very cool name of Boss, a popped collar, and very cool blonde hair, our spirit was even hotter. We had never been that hot before. Tash was slamming the ball from the middle in strangely unpredicted places, Maelenn was doing her usual superman stuff, Grace was libero - perfecto, Kristy was hang-timing all over, Anja was blocking like a WALL OF DOOM, and Joelle was doing her usual cool but awesome spiking. There was of course much dancing, especially from our coach.

At the start of the day, we were actually just two carloads of shivering girls, and Eugene (wearing shorts). We entered the Ballarat High School gymnasium at 8 a.m on a chilly, chilly Saturday morning.

old and clueless, we played against Ballarine, a very experienced team. They didn’t seem to move on the court at all while they passed all our spikes perfectly, and they dumped the ball in very unsuspecting places. Yes, we had some trouble, and we lost 2 – 0. But all was still cheery on our side.

We played our second match, and drew 1-1, almost wining the third match if the 2nd referee (a lady from Ballarine… hint hint they had just beaten us) HAD NOT taken her time and called us on everything from net touches to foot over the lines.

Okay, so we were a little down, with the foreboding feeling of going all the way to Ballarat and coming home complete losers.

So, what we did after that was we won our third game by 3-0, and won the fourth by 3-0. WOOHOO!
Anyways, the next morning, we HAD to win the next team – VIC under 17s. Mainly because we didn’t want to referee the LAST game of the day. Oh and we wanted to be in the finals. We won 2-1 against them, putting us in the finals! Yay!

The finals was sweeeet. Ballarine basically did the same thing – smart plays, dumping the balls everywhere, putting up some blocks against us. But, we made them move, and they seemed surprised at our improvement since the morning before. We won the second set before losing, 3-1.
It was not a bad loss at all. We came home smiling, knowing that we took home with us way more than just 2nd place medals.
State League here we come!

Olivia Woo

And a few words of the coach:

...Our dear setter, Olivia Woo, humbly and conveniently left herself out of the this piece she wrote. So I think it's only right that we offer her some credit (lots of it, actually). For most parts of the games, Oli managed to keep her head straight and made good plays happen. For all parts of the games, Oli was always smiling, dancing, and having a good time. She does it unknowingly, but this gives the
team a moral boost. We were unfortunate to have lost a setter before the season begun, but we are all more than fortunate to have found a GREAT setter in Oli...

Eugene Woon