The first two points for H2!

Last Friday, we played our first home match of the season. It was also our first pre-match diner together. After the two 4-0 defeats without a diner, hopefully the diner would be the secret ingredient to our success against Aastad. This heavy task of preparing a delicious meal was taken upon by Sander and Quinten. It turned out that our cooks had other plans, as they tried to secure their starting spot by poisoning Frank and Niels with pasta pesto. Fortunately, their scheme was discovered in time by Bastiaan and Niels. They took over the cooking and in the end there was enough pre-match food for everyone.

During the warming-up it was very cool to see the stands filling up again with Harambee fans after such a long time. So with confidence and the support of many Harambeeërs behind our backs, we started the first set. We ended up losing this set with 15-25. Many of our issues from the first two match were also costing us point in this set. Especially in the end of the set, too many mistakes were made with the “easy” balls. On the stands,  Monica, the number 1 Harambee fan when it comes to playing against Aastad, was also watching, so we knew we had to do better.

After a speech of Henny, we started the second set with renewed energy. Frank started the set with a series of powerful topspin jump serves. It inspired the rest of the team to also serve with a lot of pressure. Maybe a bit too much pressure, as most of the points for Aastad in the first half of the set were due to our own service mistakes. Fortunately for us, Aastad also made a lot of mistakes by hitting many attacks in the net. In the end we were victorious by winning with 25-17. Our first set of the season!

In the third set, Aastad did not give us as many presents as in the second set, so we had to work harder for our own points. Unfortunately, even after some double substitutions from Henny, we lost this set with 20-25. This third set, however, was a set were a lot of things happened that we had never seen before. Jop had a series of marvellous defensive manoeuvres.  Some of which we never seen during training. He even made Henny consider to keep Pim on the bench for a rotation or two. The third set was also a set were the setter was not really the setter. Most of the setups were given by Pim (after complaining for weeks that he was not given enough opportunities to take over the second ball, he finally got what he wished for) and our French Thomas. Last but not least, Henny lost his voice by the end of the set. We, as stormtwoopers, believe that this is the reason that we lost this set, as we could not hear the instructions form our beloved Darth Trainer.

After some adjustments to his breathing apparatus, Darth Trainer, whispered his battle plans for the fourth set and send us back in the field. The mission was simple, treat the audience to a fifth set. Our target for this set, was not very hard to miss, it was the tall guy with number 5. Darth Trainer felt that the force was slow with this one, especially when the ball is just out of his reach. Unfortunately, at the end of the set we were behind with 6 points (17-23). It was our moment to shine. Number 5 was passing and by serving on him, we were able to reduce their attacking power. As a team we worked hard to keep the ball of the ground on our side. After a successful series, surviving two time-outs from Aastad, we were in front (24-23). Three points later, we won our second set of the season (26-24)!

Winning the fourth set felt like a victory and maybe a little bit too much as we were not done yet. In the fifth set we made too many individual mistakes in passing, setting and attacking. Quickly, we were behind with 3-10, which resulted in a final score of 7-15.

Despite we lost the fifth set, we can be happy with the result. This match was much better, in many aspects, than the previous two. This gives us a good prospect for our match against Apollo H4 in Borne (during Halloween!).

Lastly, some special thanks to Roland for willing to substitute for our injured Belgian Thomas!

In sporthal 1 voerden wij een strijd

Met luid publiek dat ons begeleid

We hadden plezier

En reden voor bier

Onze eerste twee punten zijn een feit