A few notes from Hvidovre and Middelfart...

A match report is already up on Marienlystcentret.dk but I thought I would add a couple of thoughts on our match from Sunday and our training match against Middelfart from yesterday.

I have been fairly kind to Hvidovre throughout the season. In the beginning, I wrote that I felt that they had the potential to do better than they have in the past couple of seasons. After playing them, and this isn’t to be unnecessarily hard on Hvidovre, I understand why they aren’t winning many matches.

Generally, and most importantly, they are far too careless with points. Lose a point? No big deal, move on. Hit a ball out? Make an unhappy face and then move on. Serve into the back wall? Yell angry words and then forget about it. These things have to run deeper than just a superficial expression of how angry you are at yourself for making a mistake. You have to take that mistake, understand why and how you made it and then try to correct it.

While it is important as a volleyball player to forget about the last play and move on, it is also vital that the collective losing of points be stored somewhere in your brain so that you can be aware of when it is time to make a secure serve or when it is time to really go for it. Aggressiveness is key. But controlled aggression is the name of the game. Serving ball after ball out, in the name of “pressing your serve” is not the way to win a match. (Note: This turned into a diatribe on volleyball in general, not just Hvidovre)

Specifically for Hvidovre: The blocking tactics were mystifying. I take it as a kind of personal insult sometimes when teams decide not to block against one of my players. Leaving the opposite open cannot be considered a good tactic. It implies that one; he isn’t good enough to put the ball away with no blockers. Two, that I won’t be good enough to see that you aren’t blocking against him. And three, that you will now be able to stop our middles or other hitters just because you have an extra blocker to help. Also, committing on the middle every time is just an invitation for disaster. You may get one good solid stuff block somewhere in match, that is true. But even that isn’t for sure. What is for sure is that the outside hitters will hit a really high percentage because they will be hitting against one blocker all day long.

It’s important that middle blockers make an effort to read the game if they are ever going to develop into good players. You cannot just commit in the middle all the time. It’s lazy and sloppy and it makes the game much too easy for the other team. I don’t deny that middle blocker is probably the hardest position to play in the game of volleyball, but that doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t try to play it well. And I don’t mean this just for Hvidovre, that goes for a lot of the middle blockers that we have played against this year. Using what I have just said as a smooth transition, there is a team that is playing very disciplined volleyball, with middles that are working very hard on reading, and that team is Middelfart.

In our training match last night there was no doubt which team was better and it wasn’t us. I wouldn’t say that we played up to our best and I don’t have a good reason why not, but they clearly outplayed us in all the facets of the game. Particularly defense, where they touched a lot of balls, both at the net and in the backrow. It was great to see a team functioning as a unit the way they do, and I have to take my hat off to them. Hopefully, the next time we play we’ll be able to match some of that intensity and give you guys a good game.

If we plan on winning in Gentofte on Wednesday then it will take a much better effort than last night. There were just too many errors, especially on simple plays. We couldn’t get into a good rhythm because somewhere in the chain of bump, set, spike we would make a mistake. Volleyball can be an easy game unless you make it really hard on yourself and we did that last night. Anyways, hopefully thing will turn around here today and tomorrow and we can look forward to a Pokal final after Christmas…