Venue: Woodchurch HS

Time: 11:00am

Wirral vs Chester Red Falcons

Team: Katie Leppington (cpt), Eisha Chahal, Imi Newall, Abi Larway, Liv Stewart, Gabi Liu, Natsuhi Yamamoto, Victoria Adesina, Ola Rys, Julia Placze, Oliwia Gadasiewicz, Iona West.

Result: Wirral lost 1-3, 22-25, 17-25, 25-12, 14-25

Red Falcons arrived with 12 players and were much stronger than the team that was relegated last season so we knew we’d have a match on our hands. The first set began quite even but then a rotation error and a bad run on serve receive put us a long way behind. Liv went on to shore up the middle in a unfamiliar position for her, and set off a Wirral fight back, but it was too late and the set was lost 22-25.

Set 2 was an opportunity to give our U16s their first outing as a team in a competitive match. They moved and covered the court pretty well and even built some useful attack but were trailing 11-24 when Gaby came on to serve and looked at one point as though she might take the set for us.

Game on - set 3, time to get serious. Wirral started strongly and built a good lead with good recovery work and strong blocking, then came Abi’s service which completely destroyed Falcons with a series of 8 almost unreturnable serves and a 25-12 win. So on to set 4, our girls never really got going. Falcons played well, served well, and, although we managed to build a lot of attack, their defense was equal to it. They also had a middle attack player who was able to turn the ball past our block and into space. Every time it looked like we’d get a charge going and get back into the game we’d lose points through unlucky shots or errors. We lost the set to 14 and the match 3-1.

While it was a disappointing result for the U18s in our first MVL game of the new season, playing a competitive match together gave our new U16 group some useful match practice that will be valuable when they play in Round 1 of Volleyball England’s U16 Grand Prix on November 17th.

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