Round 2 Pool C

Venue: Madely School, Newcastle Road, Crewe. CW3 9JJ (off the M6 south of Crewe)

Date: Sunday, December 3rd

Team: Katie Leppington (capt), Eisha Chahal, Lily Prosser, Yanxi Chen, Liv Stewart, Abi Larway, Kaitlin Ha, Verity Wilcox. Kaitlin Ha, Imi Newall, 

Teams entered:

Frodsham, Wirral, Newcastle Staffs B, Bromsgrove School, Sheffield

Results

2nd place overall

Wirral vs Sheffield                      lost 0-2, 23-25, 13-25

Wirral vs N/castle Staffs B          won 2-0, 25-7, 25-22

Wirral vs Bromsgrove School      drew 1-1, 25-15 20-25

Warral vs Frodsham                   won 2-0, 25-6, 25-20

The best was first on this occasion - a really good performance against a strong, hard-hitting Sheffield team. Our girls served, blocked, hit and passed very well, and, from an unpromising 18-24 deficit, mounted a strong fightback in the first set only to go down unluckily 23-25. Some starting line-up changes in set 2 compounded by some early serving errors meant we never really got going in the second set when Sheffield’s hitting proved too strong.

You could see how much progress our girls have made in the other three matches. With the first 6 on court they demolished both Castle ‘B’ (25-7) and Frodsham (25-6 helped by a killer run of serves from Abi) in the first sets of their matches and easily took the first set against an awkward and unpredictable Bromsgrove team. The second sets of these games gave us a chance to get everyone involved and give the newer members of the squad some in-system match practice. 

You could see the the things we've been practicing and looking to improve in training coming through into match situations, better passing, more reliable serving, more variety in attack, and a generally better understanding of team organisation and system. We won more points with attack from 2 and 4, won a lot of points with our blocking, put together some good runs of points on serve and fought well as a group. The only disappointment was some slowness in short cover pointing up weaknesses in our swing defence system - something to work on for next time.