Bowling Green State University Athletics
Installment #3 of Van De Walle's Journal
June 22, 2006 | Volleyball
June 22, 2006
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio - June 21 Today is a big day. We play the Netherlands at 4 pm. We know they're good and we know we haven't been able to get a game from them yet. They are much more experienced than we are but that makes the trying all the sweeter. 7 pm-Well the match is over and we didn't execute the game plan. We needed tough serving and aggressive hitting and it just didn't happen. We lost 19-25,22-25, and 22-25. So their streak over Team USA continues. In my opinion, the Netherlands played their best match of the tournament so far. Petra, #10, who is an exceptional player for them had a great match against us. It was very interesting for me to watch the intensity raise with each point they scored. They knew what a win over Team USA meant...top seed in our pool and that matched them up with Japan...who hadn't won a match. We have trained hard for the last few months and have improved immensely since Athens. However, the skill of the Dutch was still too much for us. It was apparent to me as we made so many unforced errors throughout the match. We played a bit tight and looked scared at times. Tomorrow is the match we need. We play Lithuania at 1 pm and that's the one that gets us the qualifying bid. Lithuania is good! It will be tough. I believe we can do it if we play a lot more relaxed.
June 22 Got up today and finally worked out. Felt great! Breakfast was 10:15 and then off to the bus stop for an 11:30 am departure. We got to the gym early and had to wait until the match between Egypt and Russia (men's) finished. I thought the warm up was pretty good on our side of the net. The Lithuanian team, however, decided to make it a battle and hit every ball into our team. (The protocol is the same as college game except we have shared hitting on the floor and you're supposed to hit line only.) Well, Lithuania hit almost every ball cross court into where I was tossing in balls for our setter). It became a battle! We asked the official to control the hitting and he acted like he didn't know what I was talking about. Oh well.. The match started with great passing and setting but consecutive hitting errors had us down 8-1. We lost game one 19-25. Game two went our way with a come from behind win, 27-25. Game three was a lot like game one with streaky play, with us losing 23-25. We put together a GREAT game four...we were in control the entire game beating them 25-18. Great passing again and much better hitting helped us control the win. Game five was a heart-breaker. We lost 15-12. We sat stunned at the outcome. We didn't qualify for China with the loss.
