Volleyball at Ohio University

I know it’s a case of Coulda, Woulda, Mighta, but consider how things have played out in the NCAA tournament. We beat #26 Notre Dame in five. We played #13 Michigan to a tie of 13-13 in the final set before they took the last two points and earned their way into the Sweet Sixteen.

And there, Michigan took down Stanford, a team seeded among the top eight in the nation. This has to have an effect on our ultimate ranking for the year—not to mention how great the players must feel.

In the round of eight, Michigan lost to Hawaii—who now goes on to face the omni-dominant Penn State next weekend in Tampa. (The winner plays either Minnesota or Texas in the finals.)

But all in all, what a year for OU volleyball.

And now a photo from Art Ricker, Lexie’s grandfather, who took this of me in the final moments of the glorious Notre Dame match. I believe I was rather happy at the time! Thanks Art, for turning the lens on the photographer.

Four photos out of hundreds. Four moments out of thousands. For the last four years she has been our muscle and our brain. She has pounded the ball down, rolled it into the empty middle pocket of the court, pushed it to the deep corner. She defines the overhand serve reception. She’s determined, effervescent, and a complete delight as a person.

What will we do without her?!

We’ll move on, of course. But Ellen Herman has left her mark on the team—and in the record books. I certainly wasn’t thinking about this when we beat Notre Dame last Friday night, but that victory enabled Ellen to go back on the court the following night against Michigan, and to log her 18th kill (out of 26 for the match), which put her at the top of the all-time MAC Career Kills List.

Can we put it simply? The greatest volleyball player ever in the Mid-American Conference.

Here she is, in action and at rest.

So it’s the fifth game against Michigan. We’re tied two-two, and Cricket and I have set down our cameras and found seats on the concrete stairs at the edge of the large, voluble congregation of OU fans. The band has stirred everyone up—in case they needed to get their emotions in gear. Not much worry about that, actually, as we have already been through some nail-biting games getting to 2-2, and everything will be decided in this last short set.

The first game, Cricket and I have agreed, was the single best game we’ve ever watched in volleyball—and we’ve watched a lot of them. It started brutally. I was standing on some stairs in one of the few places permitted to photographers, just behind the serving area. I could barely take a photo I was so nervous once play started. Bang, whang, flam, bam and we were down 4-0. We hung on. Sue had a kill, Michelle had a kill, Ellen had a kill, and we were closing in. Sue was ripping her serves. I love to get close to a game. Sure, tactics are more visible from a distance, but the power of Sue’s serves was something to feel up close. Slam, an ace. Then a block by Katie and Michelle, and another ace by Sue, a hard-curving dive into the deep left back of their court—and we were up 6-4! This galvanized the OU players: they were just below me and going crazy. The OU section of the crowd was also going crazy. The student end-zone section of Michigan supporters, after all their chanting about Ohio being the worst state ever, and their assorted cheers ending in You Suck, were now silent, with only an occasional and desperate fan calling out.

Did I gloat? You bet.

Read the rest of this entry »

Our spirit is strong for tonight’s match.

Dropped the first game, dropped the third—but played brilliantly in the second, fourth and final games. We ran Notre Dame hard. We held their hitters to a .125 attack percentage in the match, we blocked well (twenty as opposed to their six), we had eighty-one digs!

Notre Dame had only lost one match of their last fifteen. From the stats, one could make it sound like we clobbered them. We didn’t. After all, we went into the fifth game tied two to two. But we roared out of the blocks in the final game, and sat them down in the go-home chair with a definitive 15-7.

Our band played: it sounded just like home in the tiny (1800-seat), well-lit gym with seats on three sides of the court. Photographers could stand in only three places, very restrictive. Still, we plenty to work with, and a good high perch above the court.

The fans made some noise. A certain Post parent made lots of noise! Just what I want to hear, personally. The celebration among parents and other OU fans after we clinched the last point was an adventure in delirium. I was sitting next to Lexie’s grandfather, who had made a twelve-hour drive to watch the team play–You go, Art! Everyone was jumping up and down and hugging everyone else, Pong was beaming, we were all part of the OU family. (This, after Cricket and I set down our cameras to cheer in the final set.)

Here are a couple of photos that define the match, one of Ellen, one of Meghan. Beneath them, click on the Read the rest of this entry link to see some others.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re off to Ann Arbor for the opening of the Stanford Regionals, hosted by the University of Michigan. We play Notre Dame at 5:30 on Friday.

Notre Dame, after losing 3-2 to Louisville, has just dropped out of the AVCA poll. (This has been the closest-to-reality poll this year, from the America Volleyball Coaches Association.)

Notre Dame didn’t drop far, just a slot to 26th. OU seems to be riding around 36th. We’re going to see a hard-fought match, and the gym looks nice and bright, so we’ll bring back some good photos.

The NCAA: we’re ready!

And after Notre Dame, a powerful Michigan team we’d like to play.

Hope to see you in Ann Arbor

…we were very good indeed. In our second and fourth games against Dayton, we clicked well, played hard, kept our mistakes to a minimum. It was lovely to watch—and heart-stopping, in the fourth game, to keep the Flyers at bay, not to let them take the match when they clawed back, 24-24.

But when we were bad…we weren’t exactly horrid, but limp. Dayton ruled the first, third and final games. Overall, they hit .384 to our .228. We had predictable trouble with their All-American middle, Lindsay Fletemeir. At 6′6″, she had a good look at dozens of sets in the middle, made two attack errors but otherwise had 21 kills on 42 attempts.

It often came down to Dayton’s first touch on the ball. If the pass or dig came up to their setter at the net, she could put up a little two-ball and Fletemeir could work off our single blocker and put it down, over and over, often close to the ten-foot line. She went left, she went right, if we got two blockers on her she often went between them. It was the battle of the night—and OU can be proud that we stopped her often enough to take games two and four.

Twelve service errors—but six aces. (Dayton had the same ratio, with six and three.)

Ellen had 20 kills, Sue 13 and Meghan 12. Faith hit .500.

We had 6 blocks and they had 21. Ouch.

Statistics do not describe a match, however. Sprit was great, there were plenty of OU fans in the awkward Flyers gym (painful lighting; stands too removed from the court), we made some noise and gave Dayton a good run overall.

It was great to see Brian Wiegel in the stands, last year’s Zach Weinberg. These are the guys who do an enormous amount of work for the team, everything from putting up and taking down the nets to videotaping the matches and keeping stats.

It seems to me there’s a case to be made that we beat Western Michigan in the MAC Championship match because of Zach’s video and stat-keeping on Western’s semi-final match—which I assume Ryan and the other coaches studied feverishly well into that Saturday night. Well, I daresay there were some other elements at play as well.

Brian was just as lively and cheerful as ever. Is it possible that volleyball makes better people? Or is it that there’s something in the sport that draws great people to it? Anyway, a belated hats-off to a couple of great sports management guys, Brian Weigel and Zach Weinberg.

Now for the photos. The lighting was so bad I had to shoot almost everything from the floor. (Bumped the ASA to 1600, lowered the speed to 1/400th, shot everything at a wide-open 2.0, and still had to add some light with a photo program when I got done.) Still, some good perspectives. Such as these first two photos, which we could take, unfortunately, as The Story of the Match.
Read the rest of this entry »