The weekend of the 19th our 13's team had their very first volleyball tournament! We were entered into the club division with 54 other 13's teams. Having only 4 weeks of practice and learning the rotations this team did amazing! The girls were very receptive to the coaching and critiques by both  myself and coach Liti. We have finally nailed down our rotations and now we can start to work on refining skills that will make us even better volleyball players.

On the first day of California Kickoff we went 1-2 taking each game to three! It made for a long night, but we realized early on that these girls are full of passion and drive. In our second match of the day, we made the MVVS 13's team work for every point. For a short match that is meant to be taken to 15 points the final score was 22-24. Aspire fought hard and played aggressive.

The second day we did very well. we went 3-1 taking  two games to three and winning both of those. We learned during this weekend that even if we are down by 9 points, we can win. I have some very competitive talented girls on my team and I can't wait for the next tournament! 

We ended the tournament in THIRD! Everyone at Aspire is so proud of these girls and can't wait to see what happens next. 

Highlights:

In our defeat against Dynamic Sydney N. had 15 aces and ZERO errors! In our game against Sojahs she had 7 aces, and in numerous other games she had 4 and 5 aces. She also had a great passing game in day two passing mostly 3's and 2's. Lylah, Mele, Maya and Natalie all had multiple aces per game as well!

The whole weekend we had 6 blocks by our middles! Monica and Teagan both got a block a piece and Maya had 4 solo blocks. I am so happy that all of our middles are so aggressive at the net.

Things to work on: 

We are a great serving team already, we just need to focus even more on serve receive and getting balls high and to our setters. We had too many overpasses over the weekend and are working on getting three touches on the ball before sending it to the other side of the net. 

The last few practices we have been working very hard on offense and taking quick aggressive swings at the ball. Looking at the stats, we need more hits instead of freeballing the ball over.