North Carolina State University Athletics
Sweet: First ACC Road Trip
10/1/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
Follow freshman Nikki Sweet's first year with the Wolfpack program each week via the NC State volleyball blog on GoPack.com. Nikki will keep fans up to speed on the latest happenings of the team; discussing practices, training, matches and much more.
RALEIGH, N.C. - This past week was a challenging one for Wolfpack volleyball. We stepped into Monday’s lifting and practice on a high from the previous night’s match against Georgia Tech, but we couldn’t seem to make practice as intense and productive as the previous week’s practices. We had a brief discussion at the end of practice on how we could change the momentum and make practice better for Tuesday. After having a night to let our discussion sink in, we stepped into the gym Tuesday ready to make up the difference for Monday’s practice. Overall the team and I would agree that Tuesday was a lot better. We played competitively as a team. We also pushed each other to do our best and execute our talents and techniques at a high level. After our practice Tuesday, we were all feeling good about our upcoming matches against Boston College and Maryland.
Wednesday started out as a normal day for all of us. We went to class in the morning as usual, but instead of going straight to the gym we went back to our apartments to finish packing for our first ACC road trip. We flew out Wednesday afternoon and arrived in Boston later that night, checked into the hotel, and went straight to bed to get some rest for the upcoming day. We woke up around 8 a.m. Thursday morning, ate breakfast and headed to the gym for a short practice. After our practice, we went back to the hotel to do homework and rest for our match later that night. A couple of hours went by until it was finally time to leave for the gym. We loaded into the vans and anxiously headed off to the gym to prepare for our match against Boston College.
We got off to a slow start in the first game, but we buckled down to come back and win the second. We gained intensity and fought with a highly competitive spirit, executing on all the things we discussed in our pre-match talk. We couldn’t seem to carry over that intensity into the third and fourth games, however, and we fell short in the match losing in four games.
After our upsetting loss in Boston, we headed off to Maryland on Friday to try and find some success in our match on Saturday against the Terrapins. We came out strong in the first game and played as a solid team, excelling in every aspect and winning the game. The second game we let down our guard a little but still battled with them the whole game. Unfortunately we ended up falling short in the end. We came back in the third game ready to play and led the Terps through the second half of the third game, but they eventually caught up to us to tie the score at 28-all. We battled hard the last few points, but couldn’t pull through and lost the third game 31-29. The fourth game we started off shaky and played tentative. We couldn’t catch up after they gained the lead and we lost the game. This resulted in another match lost in four.
After the disappointing game we hustled back to the locker room to have our post-match talk, which lasted a little over an hour. Our discussion was mostly on why we seem to play tentative every time a victory is within reach. We elaborated on some of the topics that came up, and we are sure that addressing these problems will help us face our fears and issues, and tackle some of our future obstacles. After releasing the bad energy from the past match, we realized we needed to come into practice this week and work harder than ever. We realized we can’t simply come into practice and play just to play, we need to come into practice everyday and try to excel as individuals and as a team.
This week we are at home once again as we take on Duke on Thursday night and Wake Forest on Saturday. Please come out to support the team. We are looking forward to seeing you there!
RALEIGH, N.C. - This past week was a challenging one for Wolfpack volleyball. We stepped into Monday’s lifting and practice on a high from the previous night’s match against Georgia Tech, but we couldn’t seem to make practice as intense and productive as the previous week’s practices. We had a brief discussion at the end of practice on how we could change the momentum and make practice better for Tuesday. After having a night to let our discussion sink in, we stepped into the gym Tuesday ready to make up the difference for Monday’s practice. Overall the team and I would agree that Tuesday was a lot better. We played competitively as a team. We also pushed each other to do our best and execute our talents and techniques at a high level. After our practice Tuesday, we were all feeling good about our upcoming matches against Boston College and Maryland.
Wednesday started out as a normal day for all of us. We went to class in the morning as usual, but instead of going straight to the gym we went back to our apartments to finish packing for our first ACC road trip. We flew out Wednesday afternoon and arrived in Boston later that night, checked into the hotel, and went straight to bed to get some rest for the upcoming day. We woke up around 8 a.m. Thursday morning, ate breakfast and headed to the gym for a short practice. After our practice, we went back to the hotel to do homework and rest for our match later that night. A couple of hours went by until it was finally time to leave for the gym. We loaded into the vans and anxiously headed off to the gym to prepare for our match against Boston College.
We got off to a slow start in the first game, but we buckled down to come back and win the second. We gained intensity and fought with a highly competitive spirit, executing on all the things we discussed in our pre-match talk. We couldn’t seem to carry over that intensity into the third and fourth games, however, and we fell short in the match losing in four games.
After our upsetting loss in Boston, we headed off to Maryland on Friday to try and find some success in our match on Saturday against the Terrapins. We came out strong in the first game and played as a solid team, excelling in every aspect and winning the game. The second game we let down our guard a little but still battled with them the whole game. Unfortunately we ended up falling short in the end. We came back in the third game ready to play and led the Terps through the second half of the third game, but they eventually caught up to us to tie the score at 28-all. We battled hard the last few points, but couldn’t pull through and lost the third game 31-29. The fourth game we started off shaky and played tentative. We couldn’t catch up after they gained the lead and we lost the game. This resulted in another match lost in four.
After the disappointing game we hustled back to the locker room to have our post-match talk, which lasted a little over an hour. Our discussion was mostly on why we seem to play tentative every time a victory is within reach. We elaborated on some of the topics that came up, and we are sure that addressing these problems will help us face our fears and issues, and tackle some of our future obstacles. After releasing the bad energy from the past match, we realized we needed to come into practice this week and work harder than ever. We realized we can’t simply come into practice and play just to play, we need to come into practice everyday and try to excel as individuals and as a team.
This week we are at home once again as we take on Duke on Thursday night and Wake Forest on Saturday. Please come out to support the team. We are looking forward to seeing you there!
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