What happened to September?

After realizing that we haven't updated our blog since the first weekend, I realized just how quickly the first half of our season has gone!  After returning from California determined to improve, we did just that! We opened at home against Reinhardt with a solid victory in front of our always great home crowd and then won all four matches in the Cage that weekend to claim our 4th consecutive Berry Invitational Championship.  So, after our 0-4 start, we quickly found ourselves 5-4 and all seemed right again.

The beginning of the next week brought more challenges as we dropped a close four set match on the road to Piedmont, and we all felt like we could have played better.  However, as I am beginning to realize about this team, they are terrific at bouncing back.  We went on the road two days later and beat a very solid Faulkner team in three sets.

From there, our attention quickly turned to preparing to host our cross town rival Shorter the following Tuesday.  In front of a record crowd (over 1,000 fans in the Cage that night), we lost a tight four set match, but there were a light of bright moments.  See a few highlights below.

The following weekend we headed to Emory to play in their homecoming tournament.  I don't know when I have been so proud of a group of players as I was that weekend.  We went into the weekend with a variety of challenges including injuries, illness, and a team member having lost a loved one.  When it was all said and done, we played three five set matches (won two and lost one of them) and THEN played #3 in the country with a line up we had only practiced one day and competed very well.  Our team's heart and competitive spirit over the course of that long weekend was something to be admired.  Along the way we were also fortunate to have one of our families host us for brunch, and it was the perfect way to start that second day of the tournament.

This past week brought more challenges as the majority of our team were struggling with some type of cold/flu.  It was a rough start to the week as we dropped our match on the road, but we rebounded to defeat an NCAA DII school in the Cage to kick off Mountain Day weekend and honor our parents.  Below is a short video that we shared on parent night prior to introducing the parents before the match.  Enjoy!

Speaking of honors, two of our players reached really big milestones this month.  Senior outside hitter Claire Scott and junior libero Kristin Hargrove both reached 1,000 career digs.  It was fitting that they reached this milestone so close together as they compliment each other so well on our back row.  We were able to honor them prior to our parents' night match and present each of them with the game ball that was in play when they made their 1,000th dig.

We head to Shorter again tonight!  Looking forward to sharing some great highlights from tonight's match!  Go Vikings!