Dig It! 14’s Save the BEST for Last!!! 

The month leading up to Regionals were rocky at best for this team!  We came off a hard loss in Gulf Shores, had our Middle hitter Megan Wade out with a broken finger, knew we were going to be missing our primary setter at the Championships, lost a player, and picked up two girls who showed up one night at a Dig It! Skills camp for the last few weeks of season to make sure we had enough players to even make the trip!  Add to that the fact that Coach Rich got hit with a 3 week TDY, and Coach Angela was fighting a shoulder injury…..it is a wonder that we even made it through the door of Regionals!

When we started the tournament, we were struggling.  A completely new rotation had our Right Side hitter/defensive specialist Jackie in the role of setter and setting a 5-1 for the first time EVER!  Megan Smith was in a Libero jersey, but had never even practiced a Libero swap and didn’t know that she was going to be wearing a different color jersey until she got to Atlanta.  The twins, Lauren and Lindsey were seeing a BIG tournament for the first time and had only been with us for a few practices since Gulf Shores.  This young team was just a little overwhelmed at the start of this weekend.

Our first match was vs Tri-County Southern Fire 14-1.  They are a club out of Atlanta, and had some BIG girls……and when I say BIG, I mean “6 feet tall and scary at the net” big.  (Abominable Snowman BIGJ Hey?  Where’s the star???)  We dropped the match 21-25, 20-25 but the girls played WAY UP with this team!  Mary Margaret led us in Serving and Rhian led us in Kills.  Lindsey had some great digs and Jackie settled into the setters roll and put up some beautiful sets that match!  It was a Loss that a coach isn’t too upset about though…..since the girls played so well and were in both games fighting for each point.

Our second match was against PLA 14-1.  Again….a BIG team.  (Rich and I really thought that we needed to check some birth certificates on these kids!)  They didn’t look 14 for sure!  This match was our hardest loss, falling 12-25, 18-25.  We had some great rallies, Aces from Mary Margaret, Lindsey and Lauren, and this was Rachael’s best game in pool play!  She dominated the net in her rotation!  We just couldn’t get any serving streaks and had too many errors on the service line.  They also had some great servers and we had trouble in serve receive this match…..a bad combination that we couldn’t overcome.

Last but not least, we met the Tsunami 14-3 team.  We dropped the first game 18-25, and Rich and I were really thinking we were coming out of pool play with nothing but losses!  Not the way we wanted to go into Sunday for sure!  After a lively pep talk (and a dose of Llama spit) from Coach Rich and myself, a song from Captains Rhian and Jackie, and a little Hannah Montana jig by Mary Margaret….the girls re-energized on the switch and came out in game two fired up and ready to go!  They fought one point at a time, and secured a victory in game 2 with a 27-25 Win!  Megan Wade, Rhian Stinemetz and Mary Margaret led the team in Kills, and Rhian also led in Digs.  We started the 3^rd set struggling to keep our serves in.  Each server got up and served a great serve and followed it up with a net or out serve!  That doesn’t work well….especially in a 15 point game!  But then Lindsey stepped up to the plate and served a streak of 4 Aces…..and we finished winning a match!

We ended up being 3^rd in our pool, which meant that we were coming into the Silver Bracket for Sunday…..but after I looked down the list, I saw it was going to be NO CAKE WALK!  There were some TOUGH teams that were in Silver along with us!  I went to bed on Saturday night thinking that we would be really LUCKY to make it through two rounds of Sunday’s bracket.  Thank goodness, the TEAM went to bed with visions of sugar plums, cheering crowds and victories dancing in their headsJ  They met me at breakfast the next morning tired but ready to go!  They were all asking what time the Finals match was going to be…..but I honestly couldn’t even tell them because I hadn’t even looked that far ahead!!!  I didn’t think we would have a chance of playing that late in the day!

Our first match in Silver was against Tri-County Southern Fire’s 14-2 team.  After seeing their 1 team the day before, I was thinking that if we played our game and passed the serve, we would be able to take this team pretty easily.  We did just that!  We had NO SERVE RECEIVE ERRORS in the match!  All of our passers were getting the ball up to Jackie, and we had very few hitting errors on this match too!  Megan Wade and Mary Margaret Beck led the team in Kills, Lindsey Yeldell led the team with 6 Aces, and Jackie stayed home and played some awesome defense this match and came out with the most Digs!!!  We took the match 25-18, 25-21.  It was a GREAT start to the day!

Match two was the Quarter finals and we got paired up with North Atlanta’s 14-1 team.  They are a big team and we had reffed them in Birmingham during our first tournament outing.  I just remember thinking at the time that I was REALLY GLAD we didn’t have to play them!  Well, I didn’t remind the girls of that January match, and they made me EXTREMELY PROUD when they came out and served the opposition off the court!  We won 25-13, 25-22! Mary Margaret and Rhian led in Serving, Mary Margaret, Rachael and Megan Wade led in Kills, and Rhian and Lindsey led the defense!  Jackie had a great match…..smart sets and 2 great dumps for points!  Ashley also had some great hits this match….and two emergency sets that were picture perfect!  I had to run to the boards to look at the rest of the days schedule because I really hadn’t written it down after I saw who we were going to have to play!!!

The Semi Final match versus Select has to go down in history as the biggest comeback I have EVER witnessed in this sport!!!  It gives me chill bumps just to look at the stat sheet….and I think if anyone would have had a recorder in the vicinity of Coach Rich and myself during this match, you would realize how crazy we both are, how near we came to having heart attacks, and how happy we were to see the girls stick together and play with heart against what seemed like such IMPOSSIBLE ODDS!  Game one was tough, but we were behind 3-5 points almost from the start.  We would win a great rally where the ball crossed the net 10 times, and then give them a point on a service error!  We got a little nervous and tried to do too much with our hits….swinging too hard and sending the ball out.  Peanut was our Rock on offense….she swung 11 times with no errors, but only got 3 kills.  Rachael also got 3 Kills, but got blocked more times than that and we weren’t covering our hitter tight enough against this team.  We lost set one 25-21.

Set two started off horribly!  We were down 3-14 before I even realized it.  We called a time out, talked to the girls about shifting our serve receive and pushing some girls who were struggling to the net or to the back.  They went out….made the adjustments and BINGO….we were off and running!  Now when I say that this was an “incredible comeback”, I mean it!  We got HOT…Lauren Yeldell got up to serve and served 3 Aces and 4 Power serves that they couldn’t generate a hit off of...and the next time I looked, we were 13-16 and had our best rotation on the floor!  The latter half of game two was about the bloodiest battle I have seen out of 14 year old kids! Every point found bodies on the floor…..people making great saves and smart plays!  We won game two 27-25 and Coach Rich and I were warned against excessive celebration when we ran onto the court and started handing out High Fives and tossing girls into the air at the finish of this game!  (I took the warning….saluted the head ref and prayed for the opportunity to get another one in game 3!)Talk about a nail biter! 

Game 3 almost killed me!!!  Coach Rich was flapping his shirt because he was sweating like he had run a marathon; I was splotchy and sure that my hair was going to turn white before it was over!  The girls played hard, but we got down and couldn’t come back.  Next thing I knew they were sitting on game point and we only had 9…..BUT we sent little Lindsey to the service line and that kid hammered out serves that would have been Aces on the 18’s courts!!!  Overpasses got punished….Rachael had a Solo Block that almost made me cry!  The girls listened and definitely didn’t play scared or safe!  We had a huge crowd chanting “WE ARE…..DIG IT!”, we forced them to take two time outs, and before you know it we were tied 14-14 and Coach Rich and I were jumping up and down on the sideline screaming like teenage girls at a concert!  Lindsey stayed focused and served two more bullets to win that game!!!  It was by far the best thing that I have witnessed in a long time!  Rich and I ran out on the court again…..and through a tunnel of fans…..and slapped hands with the poor Select girls who we had snatched the Semi Final victory from in such dramatic fashion.  I really felt sorry for that poor coach!  I know that he was stunned and couldn’t believe what had happened!  We all got on the floor and did our victory cheer…..and then it was time to start the final match!

By this point we were really tired!  We had lost a lot of energy in the adrenaline rush of the last match, and I was worried about us being able to keep everything together in this last contest.  Game one of the finals started with Impact serving Aces and getting kills one after the other.  We looked shell shocked and rattled.  I called two time outs early in this game, but we just couldn’t break their streaks.  Impact rattled our cage hard game one, and we lost 9-25.  The girls were upset and I thought this would be our quickest match yet…..but of course, I was wrong yet again!

Somehow…..they rallied.  They came into game two determined and ready!  Against all odds……they took game two 25-22 and stunned not only Coach Rich and myself, but the opposing team and the crowd!  Ashley had her best game of the season!  She had 5 swings with no errors and one kill that had Rich and I screaming our heads off…..it was a BEAUTIFUL cut shot that skimmed down the tape and dropped like a rock to the floor untouched!  Mary Margaret had some of the hardest hits of the year!  When she hits with top spin, it is going to be a KILL!  Rachael had two Block Solo’s against Impacts biggest middle!  They were SWEET!!!  Megan Smith read the outside hitter like a book and had a steady platform waiting for the ball several times!  Rhian served 4 ACES and as usual was the “Swinging Queen”….totaling 12 hits with no errors and 3 kills!  Jackie was working her magic and didn’t let the refs tight double calls get in her head!  She put up some amazing sets and dug some balls out of the net that no one else would have had a chance at!  Megan Wade was a MACHINE!  Digging and hitting with confidence…and throwing out hysterical comments that had Coach Rich and I in tears “Yeah….I dug you….bring it on!”  It was the best she has played this season!  Lindsey and Lauren were our anchors at the service line!  They both hammered out great serves under pressure, and seemed to be in the right place at the right time to make digging look like a walk in the park!  It was AMAZING!!!Sadly, we just couldn’t pull out the match victory, and fell in game 3; 10-15.  The team of course was upset and sad that we couldn’t win the match and take the Silver Championship title, but after everything we had done that day, our luck just run out!  We ended up 2^nd out of 22 teams!  An amazing accomplishment given the fact that only one of these kids has played in a Club Tournament before this season, and two of these players only trained with us the last few weeks!

This team has been awesome!  An amazing group of girls with hearts as big as I have ever seen!  Boy, did they ever surprise Coach Rich and myself this weekend!!!  Turned the corner and put it all together in a do or die situation!!! They learned not to let their opponent’s size intimidate them, and that every really tough team has a weakness that can be exploited!  They overcame a lot of obstacles and defeated some tough opposition!  Scott has fondly dubbed them “The Little Team that COULD!”  Dig It! is so proud of them and all that they accomplished together this season!  It was a great run!!!  Toothpick, Spaz, M&M, Peanut, Killa, Clumsie, Chatta, “Wonder Twins” and of course Lilly Bee……Thanks for giving me so many great memories, and for making me need even more L’Oreal Hair Color!!!You are the best!!! 

Coach A

Chief Llama trainer, moose herder and camel rider!!!