North Carolina State University Athletics
Sweet: On the Road Again
10/29/2007 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. - After the previous weekend, we started off this past week ready to work hard and prepare ourselves for our upcoming matches. We started off by having weights on Monday, a short yet competitive practice, and then film after that. Our weights are now getting a little lighter, as we are lifting to maintain our strength instead of gain it, and I am happy to say that we all have abs that are rock hard from the gaining intensity of our workouts.
Our practice Monday focused more on playing competitively. The defensive specialists and outside hitters worked the whole practice on serve receive and getting our passing percentages up by playing a serve receive game to see which “team” (out of two) could get the highest passing percentage. After this practice we headed down to the locker room to analyze our performance in our previous matches.
Tuesday and Wednesday was the usual. We had conditioning Tuesday, and weights Wednesday before practice. We all worked hard in practice on improving the things we didn’t do so well in our matches against Miami and Florida State. Our hitters also worked on some new shots, and the passers worked on technique. At the end of both practices, we did a wash drill that incorporated everything we had been working on in practice, and we did pretty well with keeping the intensity up and executing at our level. We ended practice Wednesday feeling pretty good about the upcoming weekend.
We flew out to Atlanta on Thursday afternoon, and arrived in time to get a good dinner in before we headed to bed. We woke up around 8 a.m., and headed off to the gym to loosen up and have a short practice before we faced off with Georgia Tech. The match that night was a different experience for us. They had a relatively small gym with a loud band, announcer, crowd, and other distractions. The sound seemed to fill every ounce of the gym, and it was extremely hard for us to hear ourselves talk, yet alone communicate with one another. Despite our difficulty in communication, we came out strong the first game. They led us most of the game, but we put up a good fight and made them earn each point. Unfortunately, however, we fell short in the end. The second game was not as good. We became more hesitant, our passing broke down and we also seemed to have more unforced errors. In the locker room between games, we talked about wanting to play good volleyball and executing at our best level. This motivated us and we came out strong in the third game, scoring the first three points. We then fell back into the same funk that we had in game two. Georgia Tech used that to their advantage and sealed the deal by winning the match in three games.
After the match we addressed our lack of feeling comfortable on the court and how that had affected our play. After our post match discussion, we headed to the bus and departed for Clemson.
Our match Saturday against Clemson wasn’t much better than the night before. We didn’t come out very strong in the first game, and we lost by a good margin. In the second game we turned the tables and made Clemson earn every point, but despite our increased level of play, we still lost the game. We went to the locker room between games two and three and had a short discussion. We were happy with our ability to come back strong in the second game, but we still weren’t pleased with our overall performance. After our discussion, we started off the third game shaky and couldn’t seem to catch back up after that. We ended up dropping the match in three games.
We are excited to be back home this week as we take on our rivals at North Carolina on Tuesday. We then host Maryland on Friday and Boston College on Sunday. We are looking forward to these upcoming matches, and we are excited to be back in front of our home crowd this weekend. Please come out to support us! We are looking forward to seeing you there.
RALEIGH, N.C. - After the previous weekend, we started off this past week ready to work hard and prepare ourselves for our upcoming matches. We started off by having weights on Monday, a short yet competitive practice, and then film after that. Our weights are now getting a little lighter, as we are lifting to maintain our strength instead of gain it, and I am happy to say that we all have abs that are rock hard from the gaining intensity of our workouts.
Our practice Monday focused more on playing competitively. The defensive specialists and outside hitters worked the whole practice on serve receive and getting our passing percentages up by playing a serve receive game to see which “team” (out of two) could get the highest passing percentage. After this practice we headed down to the locker room to analyze our performance in our previous matches.
Tuesday and Wednesday was the usual. We had conditioning Tuesday, and weights Wednesday before practice. We all worked hard in practice on improving the things we didn’t do so well in our matches against Miami and Florida State. Our hitters also worked on some new shots, and the passers worked on technique. At the end of both practices, we did a wash drill that incorporated everything we had been working on in practice, and we did pretty well with keeping the intensity up and executing at our level. We ended practice Wednesday feeling pretty good about the upcoming weekend.
We flew out to Atlanta on Thursday afternoon, and arrived in time to get a good dinner in before we headed to bed. We woke up around 8 a.m., and headed off to the gym to loosen up and have a short practice before we faced off with Georgia Tech. The match that night was a different experience for us. They had a relatively small gym with a loud band, announcer, crowd, and other distractions. The sound seemed to fill every ounce of the gym, and it was extremely hard for us to hear ourselves talk, yet alone communicate with one another. Despite our difficulty in communication, we came out strong the first game. They led us most of the game, but we put up a good fight and made them earn each point. Unfortunately, however, we fell short in the end. The second game was not as good. We became more hesitant, our passing broke down and we also seemed to have more unforced errors. In the locker room between games, we talked about wanting to play good volleyball and executing at our best level. This motivated us and we came out strong in the third game, scoring the first three points. We then fell back into the same funk that we had in game two. Georgia Tech used that to their advantage and sealed the deal by winning the match in three games.
After the match we addressed our lack of feeling comfortable on the court and how that had affected our play. After our post match discussion, we headed to the bus and departed for Clemson.
Our match Saturday against Clemson wasn’t much better than the night before. We didn’t come out very strong in the first game, and we lost by a good margin. In the second game we turned the tables and made Clemson earn every point, but despite our increased level of play, we still lost the game. We went to the locker room between games two and three and had a short discussion. We were happy with our ability to come back strong in the second game, but we still weren’t pleased with our overall performance. After our discussion, we started off the third game shaky and couldn’t seem to catch back up after that. We ended up dropping the match in three games.
We are excited to be back home this week as we take on our rivals at North Carolina on Tuesday. We then host Maryland on Friday and Boston College on Sunday. We are looking forward to these upcoming matches, and we are excited to be back in front of our home crowd this weekend. Please come out to support us! We are looking forward to seeing you there.
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