I don’t know if I’ll attend every home match this season, and I definitely don’t know if I’ll write about them all. But after last night I definitely felt like coming back 24 hours hence for some more volleyball!
I didn’t take any photos tonight, since I already caught all the enhancements to gym and my other photos were…meh. Just meh ; Instead of getting a good low vantage point for pictures, I took to my normally preferred perch up high. If you can’t be the up referee, being as high up in the bleachers as possible is the next best vantage point.
The opponents this evening were the Seattle Pacific Falcons. And they’re a team with a mercurial history. When I first started PA, they were the best team in our league, bar-none. After a couple of years, when we were the best team in the league, they weren’t just no longer tops, they were horrible. And then the year after, they were good again. And now lately, they’ve been very good again — they are league champions two years running entering this season. Every team has their ups and downs (except, perhaps, Concordia-St. Paul), but they usually don’t fluctuate that much, that fast. They entered play tonight at 4-6, with one league win. That came in 4 sets against Simon Fraser University, the team that made history as the first Canadian school ever to be accepted for membership by the NCAA. I again entered expecting a three-set sweep.
For the second night in a row, there was no one on hand to perform the national anthem. They just played a recording. We did that a pinch when we didn’t have a singer lined up, but it was always the fallback and never the plan. Hopefully that too is just a product of school not yet being in session and them not having a student body to draw from. I recall one match when the microphone just would not work. I was unable to do any of my pre-match announcements, nor player introductions, and the anthem singer had to do it without any amplification. And I also had to get the crowd’s attention without any amplification! It all went off without a hitch (the singer did marvelously), and the mic eventually came to life part of the way through the match, but it was all pretty surreal.
As for tonight’s match, the first set was very different from the second two. The WWU team seemed a bit out of sorts in set number one. They committed lots of hitting errors (though some were very close line/out calls). Our girls were able to draw even a few times with service aces. Aces are a funny thing — they’re quite naturally credited to the player serving the ball, but they’re just as often caused by poor serve reception rather than anything done especially well by the server.
The Seattle Pacific libero Brianna Leenders played a very good match, making numerous diving one-handed digs that took immense athletic skill. But she had a blooper reel moment in the first set as well. On 9-9, a hit from the Western side went through the block and to the back row. It looked like it would be an easy play for the libero to keep it alive for a pass to the setter, but…her feet just went out from under her. I’m not really sure how it happened. And the ball fell harmlessly to the ground.
Some more oddities followed. The Vikings gave the point back right after Leenders’ whoopsie-daisy with a service error. On 12-12, the Falcons were called for hitting the ball outside the antenna, but it was not noticed by the up referee who was literally inches away from the play. Nor was it noticed by the flagger on the same side of the court. No, it was the flagger clear across the court, the official with easily the worst view of the shot, who called it. And it was a moment before the up referee blew his whistle to call the point himself. At that point I recognized this referee from my PA days. I don’t want to sling too much mud, so let’s just say I was never too pleased to see him emerge as one of the referees when I came to call a match.
WWU started to take control as the set wore on. Seattle Pacific called timeout at 17-14, and was able to run it back to a tie at 18 following two more weird points. The first was a service ace that our girls abandoned, shouting “OUT!” despite the fact that the ball landed in bounds by a good two feet. Not good judgment, ladies. The point after, WWU libero Samantha Hutchinson simply caught the ball in midair after a hit from the other side and was, naturally, called for a carry. I asked her after the match, and she said the hit from the other side had come from outside the antenna. Undeterred, the Vikings took the next three points, leading to the second Falcons timeout. On the first point back, the Falcons scored a kill, but Coach Flick (who, by the way, granted me an interview for Monday…super excited! Stay tuned for that) and Assistant Coach Suh (as well as team captain Laurie Yearout) loudly protested that a back row attack fault should have been called. After the up and down referees conferenced, the fault was indeed called. It’s nice when they take the time to get it right, isn’t it?
I couldn’t help but notice that the PA announcer…and maybe I’m being a little too hard on him, but still…said nothing about the fault. He simply said that the point, which was at first awarded to the Falcons would instead be awarded to the Vikings. Me, I liked to explain what the hand signals meant, because I figure that’s not something that’s widely known. Sure, there’s not nearly enough time to explain what “back row attack fault” actually means, but it’s better than saying nothing, and if someone’s interested, they’ll look it up on their own.
Anyway. The ball hit the antenna on a Seattle Pacific attack again to give the Vikings set point at 24-18. This time, the up referee did call it himself. The Falcons showed some tenacity, staving off four set points and prompting Coach Flick to call time after the third, but the Vikings did eventually put the set away 25-22.
The second and third sets were both quite a bit less competitive than the first. The second set started with one of those awkward points where a team thinks it has scored and celebrates accordingly, but the ball was called out. Seattle Pacific was caught a little embarrassed here, but goodness knows it’s happened to me, too. Another officiating oddity happened on 4-2 when the ball didn’t appear to hit the ground on the WWU side until after the up referee’s whistle. On the next point, WWU hitter Kayla Erickson, a star of the match with 14 kills, smashed a ball off the Falcon defender and sending it into the stands. The guy who it landed nearest ‘kept it alive’ with a nice forehand pass to the sideline shagger ;
The point of the match probably came on 7-3. A back-and-forth rally, that included a great one-handed diving dig from Leenders on an attempted dink by Yearout that just screamed REFLEXES!, ended with Marlayna ‘Thunder’ Geary living up to her nickname by powering one through the block. I don’t know, it’s always gonna bug me a little that he can yell “THUNDEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!” for 20 seconds after one of her kills, but he says nothing when a net violation is called, as it was on the next point. And he came perilously close to speaking on the mic while the point was in play, which is just a colossal no-no for what should be obvious reasons.
Seattle Pacific called a timeout trailing 15-8, and the Vikings seized control from then on. Jennica ‘Ginger’ McPherson (the lefty redhead) scored a couple of kills with dinks, dubbed ‘Gingerbread rolls’ by the PA announcer. Okay…….that one I kinda like, credit where it’s due. WWU’s net play from then was just stifling, with the run extending to 20-10. Seattle Pacific sided out once, but that was it. A nifty kill from Erickson where she was involved in a joust and then immediately thereafter powered one home got us to a staggering set point at 24-11. The WWU attack on the next point seemed to be long, but it was called in, giving the 25-11 final.
At this point, I noticed that it seemed the Falcons were playing in what you might call ‘missing man formation’ (missing woman formation?) as one of their players, in full uniform and everything, hobbled to the locker room on crutches sporting a long leg cast. Ouch!
I felt a little bit guilty smuggling food in the last two nights, so I went to the concession stand at halftime and bought a Polish sausage. I figure if it’s anything like the kielbasas I used to get at Yakima Bears baseball games, it’d be worth $3.75. Well, it wasn’t. The concessions are kind of a racket. I should have known better.
Set three started strong, with aces from Hutchinson, but dude, shut up when the point is in play! After a couple of sideouts, McPherson (who I only now noticed is a redshirt freshman…scary how good she’ll be in a couple of years) had a run on serve of her own. It started with an awkward ‘ace’ that simply resulted from the ball not being returned despite three contacts but also featured a more conventional ace to get us to 6-2 and a Falcon timeout. The run extended to 9-2 with another ace, a kill from Erickson (who really racked them up) and a Falcon ball handling error after a joust. But after siding out, the Falcons could do nothing. This really was a lot like the third set last night.
After the ball hit the antenna again to put them down 12-3, one of their bench players took off her warmup jacket to enter the match — she hadn’t played previously. As it happens, the team was switching setters. I don’t know if this was more to get the younger player some playing time, or to simply try to find something that worked (or both, perhaps). But it really didn’t work. The lopsided score extended to 15-4 when Leenders’ tactic of diving for a one-handed dig finally failed her after working quite well many times earlier in the match. The Falcons called timeout, and I kind of wonder what the coach could possibly have said to them. They were getting their brains beat in, and everyone knew it.
They did take the first point back from the timeout with a very beach volleyball-esque point as the same girl received the serve and scored the kill. And they ran off a little mini-run to close to 18-8 after being down 17-5, though it ended with one of the worst serves of the night, landing a good three feet long. Nothing of any great note happened the rest of the way, with the Vikings taking set three 25-12.
They’re back in action next week at Northwest Nazarene and Central Washington (neither of which will be gimmes), and back at home later this month.
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