Catching up

Have I really not posted for nine days? Wow. I hate not posting for even three straight days, so to go three-times-three tells you that I have been very busy elsewhere lately. That doesn't make it sound any better, does it? I hate having priorities that rank ahead of volleyball and writing about volleyball, but there are some. I've tried to clear the decks for the upcoming few weeks, that I can write on a more regular schedule, but it might be touch-and-go. I'll hope for the best.

In actuality, I'm a little surprised that it's been nine days since my last post. I thought it was seven. Because I did livetweet the match between Lewis and Mount Olive last week. It was a good match, but it was an incredibly interesting webcast. Lewis' webcasts, like many of them, are actually TV simulcasts. For whatever reason, the commentators that Lewis usually have working their matches weren't on hand that night. The webcast went live, and for 20~ish minutes prior to the beginning of the match we had images of warmups.

The audio, though, was cranked. It was so loud that the music playing through the PA system at the gym, and later the PA voice, were completely garbled. And there was this guy talking into the mics there, too, as if to test them. I'm not sure whom he was trying to talk to (someone at a control board? He struck me as a TV intern), but obviously someone, as he was saying things like "text me if you can hear this." You could hear him just fine, particularly as he was explaining that the crowd and house mics were at 9 and 10.

Then we got to the player intros. When the Lewis team were introduced, the fans cheered and shouted. Because of course that was the first time they made any noise — why would you cheer and shout during warmups? And they blew the mics out. The sound went bye-bye. I actually kinda thought they might have turned the mics into paperweights, but the sound did eventually come back.

The pictures were nice and stable, but it was weird having neither human voice nor gym sounds accompany them. Mount Olive actually won the first set of the match, 25-17 if memory serves. It was a case of "loose and carefree, with nothing to lose" versus "oh my god, what just happened?" At least in set 1. The Flyers put the clamp down in set 2. Sets 3 and 4 were closer, but also went to Lewis, to give them the 3-1 win.

One moment from the match really sticks out. Late in set 3, with Lewis holding a slim lead. A bad pass on the Mount Olive side led to their star hitter Angel Dache needing to take a flailing swing at the ball as he fell ass-backwards toward the scorer's position while standing pretty much parallel with the net, just a few feet off it. In real time, I thought it was gonna be a miracle for him just to get it over (the hit was on 3), but somehow he actually got a kill out of it. I'm really not sure how he pulled it off, and it was massively impressive. But it was also just a sideout, and Mount Olive needed a little more later in that match. I think it shows well on Mount Olive and not so well on Lewis, this result.

I planned to do my first top-10 of the season earlier this week. I'll do a full-on 'hypothetical vote' type post for next week, but this is about what my top 10 probably looked like effective for this week:

1. UCLA
2. Loyola
3. Pepperdine (I'm just not convinced yet. Beat UCLA and I will be)
4. Long Beach State
5. Stanford
6. UCSB
7. BYU
8. USC
9. Hawaii
10. Penn State

Something like this, anyway. I'll obviously put more effort into it when I do a full-on post. And I will do my level best to be around to make that post!