North Carolina State University Athletics
Sweet: A Week of Two Different Teams
10/8/2007 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 returning home from our first ACC road trip a week ago, we returned to the court this past Monday ready to work. Our main goals for this week were to work on our mental game and hold each other accountable for our actions. We realized that we needed to train our minds to be in the game 100% of the time and reduce our mental errors. We also acknowledged that we needed to push each other to remain focused on the task at hand and make smart, aggressive plays. If we keep our minds on track and push our teammates to do the same, we realize that we will be able to execute our physical game at a peak level.
Our first opportunity to test our true mental ability was our match against Duke on Thursday night. We had practiced hard all week preparing for this night and we were ready to break loose and show everyone what we were capable of. We came out ready to play and full of energy, and we wanted to catch Duke off guard from the beginning. I can definitely say that we did that. We buckled down mentally and executed physically to keep up with Duke for most of the first game, but they crept up toward the end to win.
With our intensity still up, and our desire to win at its max, we jumped into the second game with more determination than they could match. We led all of the second game and beat the Blue Devils to tie them up at one game each. In our locker room meeting after the second game, we talked about our success. We determined that we were mentally in the right mind set and because of this we were a step above our opponent. After our meeting we went into the third game again on fire and fought a good battle but came up short and lost the third game. We started off strong in the fourth game, but we were physically outmatched and lost the game to the Blue Devils in four. Overall the coaches were happy with our performance and ability to be mentally focused throughout the whole match. We limited a lot of our mental errors and executed everything we had been working on in practice the previous week.
The next match was on Saturday night against Wake Forest. Needless to say, it was a big disappointment compared to our fight against Duke. We went into the first game a little tentative and off to a slow start. We slowly started pulling it together, but it was too late and we ended up losing the first game. The second game we started off a little better, but in the end we couldn’t seem to bring it together and execute like we had done the previous time out and lost the second game. In our locker room discussion we talked about our mentality and it was obvious we had taken two steps backwards compared to our step in the right direction the two nights before. To wrap it up, we ended up losing the last game to drop the match in three to Wake Forest. It was a big disappointment, but we knew the match was in our control and we didn’t rise to the occasion. We had a long discussion after the match and, at the end of it all, we all agreed that we need to put this match behind us and move on to the next.
Thank you to all the fans that came out to support us this past Thursday and Saturday. It was really great to get to meet some of you all who stayed for the poster signing after Saturday’s match. We are looking forward to seeing you all again when we return to Reynolds Coliseum in a couple weeks. This weekend we will be traveling to Virginia to take on the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech.
RALEIGH, N.C. - After returning home from our first ACC road trip a week ago, we returned to the court this past Monday ready to work. Our main goals for this week were to work on our mental game and hold each other accountable for our actions. We realized that we needed to train our minds to be in the game 100% of the time and reduce our mental errors. We also acknowledged that we needed to push each other to remain focused on the task at hand and make smart, aggressive plays. If we keep our minds on track and push our teammates to do the same, we realize that we will be able to execute our physical game at a peak level.
Our first opportunity to test our true mental ability was our match against Duke on Thursday night. We had practiced hard all week preparing for this night and we were ready to break loose and show everyone what we were capable of. We came out ready to play and full of energy, and we wanted to catch Duke off guard from the beginning. I can definitely say that we did that. We buckled down mentally and executed physically to keep up with Duke for most of the first game, but they crept up toward the end to win.
With our intensity still up, and our desire to win at its max, we jumped into the second game with more determination than they could match. We led all of the second game and beat the Blue Devils to tie them up at one game each. In our locker room meeting after the second game, we talked about our success. We determined that we were mentally in the right mind set and because of this we were a step above our opponent. After our meeting we went into the third game again on fire and fought a good battle but came up short and lost the third game. We started off strong in the fourth game, but we were physically outmatched and lost the game to the Blue Devils in four. Overall the coaches were happy with our performance and ability to be mentally focused throughout the whole match. We limited a lot of our mental errors and executed everything we had been working on in practice the previous week.
The next match was on Saturday night against Wake Forest. Needless to say, it was a big disappointment compared to our fight against Duke. We went into the first game a little tentative and off to a slow start. We slowly started pulling it together, but it was too late and we ended up losing the first game. The second game we started off a little better, but in the end we couldn’t seem to bring it together and execute like we had done the previous time out and lost the second game. In our locker room discussion we talked about our mentality and it was obvious we had taken two steps backwards compared to our step in the right direction the two nights before. To wrap it up, we ended up losing the last game to drop the match in three to Wake Forest. It was a big disappointment, but we knew the match was in our control and we didn’t rise to the occasion. We had a long discussion after the match and, at the end of it all, we all agreed that we need to put this match behind us and move on to the next.
Thank you to all the fans that came out to support us this past Thursday and Saturday. It was really great to get to meet some of you all who stayed for the poster signing after Saturday’s match. We are looking forward to seeing you all again when we return to Reynolds Coliseum in a couple weeks. This weekend we will be traveling to Virginia to take on the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech.
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