Middelfart

Early, early, early season match that meant nearly nothing in the long run. Of course, we're glad to win, and it means something in the standings, but as far as finding out where we stand in relation to the rest of the teams in the league, this match didn't really tell us anything.

Clearly Middelfart is going to be better next time. We're also going to be better.

The only really interesting thing that happened in the match was the sudden turn around in the first set when Middelfart scored five straight points to go from 19-24 to 24-24. I don't have a whole lot of answers as to why it happened. Their serves weren't uncontrollable, the sets were fine, the hits were okay but somehow we just couldn't put a ball away. It's actually a problem that we've been dealing with. I don't know why, maybe because we're too worried about making mistakes, but we seem to lose the ability to swing freely at the ball at times. We get into a kind of safe mode and give the other team the opportunity to play defense. It's an area we'll have to get better in.

Otherwise, we played well enough to win the match in three sets. Middelfart never really threatened us after the first set. We won the next two with at least a four or five point margin. We didn't do anything spectacular, but we were solid when it mattered. They put a little bit of pressure on us with some good serving, but Shaun put away a lot of trouble balls and made it easy for us to sideout even when the passing wasn't perfect. Daniel also did a good job of hitting the ball in transition and forcing them to respect the middle at all times.

All in all, a fairly uneventful match. We'll be back in Middelfart later in the year and I expect it to be a whole different game.