2024 Tournament Recaps - Week 2

PrepDig Resolution and Winter Classic are the two big tournaments this weekend along with some 1-day events! Top finishes and our first team to win it all!

11 RED

The 11 Red's first event was supposed to be a U11 event, but due to weather and an overall lack of 11's teams signed up for the tournament at Athlete Performance in Mequon, it became a U12 event for 8 teams.  This turned out to be the perfect event for the team to get their feet wet.  We learned a lot about our crew on Saturday; they are coachable, they compete, and they get along so well already.  

We started off the morning playing a very talented Jr. Viking team that one could tell had been playing together for more than just the current season.  We lost the first set 9-25, but it was closer than the score would indicate.  We had some really tough breaks as our opponents started on a 9-0 run.  That didn't rattle the girls as they regained their footing and showed us early their competitive nature.  The 2nd set was a great back and forth set that we came up short on falling 25-27.  After that we cruised through our next 2 matches of pool play giving us a 2nd place finish that put us in the Gold Bracket.  

In the semi-finals, we faced a U12 360 team that we played our best volleyball of the day against.  Our serving was aggressive, our hitters actually attacked the ball with purpose, and our serve receive was incredibly strong. We won that match rather convincingly 2-0.  This placed us in the championship match against the same Jr. Viking team that we lost to earlier in the day. Our girls ran out of a little steam as our opponents played very clean and aggressively.  We fell in 2 sets and finished 2nd overall for the day in the 12's event.

There were so many cool things that happened during our day.  Jaidyn Alexander showed her potential as a difference maker at setting, and Kennedy Hiller exhibited so many all-around skills. Nora Schueller consistent engagement and energy makes her a tremendous leader for this group, and Stella Walter learning to be more vocal during the day shows promise as a floor leader.  Our tournament MVP, Reagan Vogelsang, was dominant as a server, earning a couple of pins, and her passing was outstanding.  Her improvement in controlling her power was impressive on Saturday and showed us that she can be a crucial piece for our team this season.

The coaches are excited to get back in the gym this week in preparation for another tournament on 1/20 now that we have seen how they play together and the things that we can do to help them improve.  I hope they're ready to be pushed like never before!

12 RED

Over the past weekend, 12 Red finally had their 1st competition of the 2024 club season. The 18-team Winter Classic tournament downtown would be a good test to see if 12 Red is up for the challenging schedule of this season. During pool play on day 1, I AM met little resistance during pool play on day 1 winning (match 1), 25-5,25-5  (match 2) 25-11, 25-5 and the crossover (match 3) 25-12, 25-8. I AM was then scheduled to play in the Gold bracket Sunday afternoon.

I AM played their 1st match against 414 Elite defeating them by a score of 25-22,25-19. This was a great warm-up match as I AM was going to play a very good Wisconsin Junior's 12-1's team in the semi finals.  

In the semi finals, I AM came out fired up and dominated the Juniors 25-16, 25-21 The team served at a 91% rate during this match and averaged 6.5 aces and 8 kills per set. I AM never let off the pressure with 5 players each having at least 2 aces during this match.

This set-up a great finals match against a very good Insanity team from Iowa. I AM again dominated its competition serving at a 91.7% rate and having 7 aces per set.  When the ball was returned, I AM averaged 5.5 digs per set and 8 kills per set with an overall hitting percentage of .395. This performance led to a final score of 25-11, 25-12 for their 1st championship of the season.  

As a coach, this was one of the most complete team efforts I have ever seen. The team only had 6 missed 1st serves during the whole tournament. 105 ACEs while only commiting 33 errors with a serving percentage of 88.3%. They did a great job of trusting their abilities, teammates, and focusing on what they could control.

Eden who took care on the defensive side with awesome serve receive and 44 digs and helped lead the team to only get aced 12 times throughout the tournament. Also Charlotte who had a total of 28 aces on the day while serving over 90%.

We are very proud of what this team accomplished this weekend, and Coach Ryden and I are excited to see what this team does with the opportunities we have for the rest of the season

The Sky's the Limit!

12 WHITE

The 12 white team had a great day of competition for their first tournament of the season. Their serve receive and serving earned most of their points, but the front row kept those rallies going! Rory and Clara carried the team with aces, & Sofie got the first joust pin. At the end of the day, Clara got voted MVP of the tournament from the team.

All in all, we went 2-2, losing on the semifinals to miss out on a matchup against 11 red. But we fought a great fight all the way until the end! The girls had a good time and we’re all looking forward to a fun season!

13 RED

After a 3 1/2 hour delayed start due to the snowstorm, the Prep Dig Resolution finally got underway! 13 Red landed in a 4-team pool. We took on Sting 13 White to start out the day. Unfortunately, we had a tough time getting going. Our serve & pass game was inconsistent and resulted in a loss 0-2. The second match we played a bit better, winning 2-0 vs. FC Elite 12 Navy. Despite the win, we knew we needed to play much better on Sunday. 

Our first match Sunday was our final pool play match and was against Elevate 13 Dolphins. We came out strong with 2 players earning top serving pins and totaled 14 kills in the match winning it 2-0!

Next we were on to the gold bracket and faced FC Elite 13 white in the semifinal match! We were a bit up and down throughout the match, but tallied 13 service aces to keep the pressure on our opponent, winning 25-21 and 25-18!

On to the championship game… where we got to meet up with Sting 13 white yet again! We started out shaky and it looked to be round 2 of a not-so-great match against them. But down the stretch we were able to fight back from behind and take the opening set 27-25. It was such an exciting win! Sting took control early in set 2 and after a 25-18 loss we headed to a third and deciding set. After the set being tied 3-3, Sting took a bit of a lead, but I AM didn’t give up. We fought back, but just fell short losing by a heartbreaking score of 15-13.

We made some key adjustments from last weekend and will have 2 weeks of practice to prepare for our next tournament.

13 BLACK

IAM 13 Black was a late entry in the "Junior Jam" tournament Sunday.  Rather than taking the weekend off, this team wanted to play~!  We finished 3-1.  This tournament allowed us to gain confidence, play teams that were in our age group and we definitely showed our stamina & endurance having all 4 matches back to back.  We fought hard when we needed to and enjoyed being up when we were paying well.  Again our serving was our clear strength.  We had 53 aces total for the day with 5 service ace pins being earned.

For the day, we took 2nd in our pool play after starting out sluggish and falling short to Milwaukee Juniors 13 Royal.  We were clearly the better team but we had trouble getting on a roll and putting points on the board. We came back strong in our next match winning in 2 sets against Mission 14 white.  This placed us in the Silver bracket.  By the time we got to bracket play this team was ready to play and had only one thing on their minds and that was to take first!  We battled McHenry 13 Navy to win in 3 sets and we finished the day with a convincing victory over Mission 13 White 25-8 and 25-21.

WEEKEND ACCOMPLISHMENTS: #GetThePin

• Serving Pins: Abbey Dobson-x2, Haley Pfiefer, Hannah Kelley and Zoe Ryan

• Overpass Kills: Hannah Kelley-x4, Sophia Ratkowski, and Zoe Ryan

• ICE pins:  Coach Heidi 

While not everyone earned a pin, every single player played so hard all day long #ShoutOut. From the rest of the team, we saw Stella Siedmann and Brooklyn Weber who stepped in and were new servers today and both just missed earning a service ace pin.  Kierstyn West racked up the points by finding the holes on the court and tipping to the spots where the other teams could NOT defend.  Eloise Hughes was everywhere on defense (I'm pretty sure I saw a few one handed diving saves throughout the day).  Edie Varney was aggressively attacking each set and consistently hit inside the court leading the team in hitting percentage.

We needed every moving part for this team to shine and they did just that.  These players are all selfless and work together as a team no matter what role they are asked to play.  Coach Megan and I are so proud and are looking forward to seeing us continue to grow, support one another and dominate on the court!

14 RED

14 Red came into the Prep Dig Resolution excited for new challenges after a very successful first weekend of Badger Power League. Everyone's weekend got off to an unusual start with the multiple changing of schedules because of the winter weather. We did a great job of adapting and staying focused on our goals. As a coach, I continue to be excited about how great it is to have a group of people so happy to be around each other all the time. It makes life as a coach stress free and it's so special to be around so many awesome people. The first two matches on Day 1 came and went without much of a hiccup. They controlled their opponents through solid serving and good fundamentals. Day 2 presented many more challenges for us. For the first time this season we encountered teams that challenged us with higher level

serving, stronger first contact, and diverse offenses. For the final match of pool play and the semifinal of gold we fought very hard to win two 3-set matches. In the championship match we continued to fight but our unforced errors caught up to us and we weren't able to overcome it. Nothing wrong with 2nd place in the field that we were in! We never gave up in any set all weekend no matter the score and that is something we are excited to build on. Unlike power league, we never really had our "A" game all weekend. This tournament showed us a lot of things we need to grow and change. It opened our eyes to another level of play and commitment that we need to strive for. Lastly, it showed how we need to grow not just physically but also mentally. We have two weeks to put in a lot of work until our next tournament which is our only single day invite of the season. The expectation is to go into that tournament as a favorite and to leave with the championship!

15 RED

Back to Back weekends with tough competition throughout has been a great way for our team to test our skill this early in the season. We played at the PrepDig Resolution in Appleton in the Open Division. Only 6 teams in this division and each one was bringing the heat. We started off against Sting 15 Black and it was great to see the mental strength coming back in game one and winning 26-24 and then getting smoked in game two losing 10-25 and then riding out the win in game three 15-13! This might be one of the biggest highlights of the season...

Next in pool play we played and tall FC-Elite 14's teaming we were able to to ball control our way to a 2 set victory, 25-18, 25-21. This gave us the bye the next day and we waited to play the winner of the play-in game. We faced off against Spiketown and played a complete match with non-stop offense where the other team couldn't match the firepower. We won 25, 17 and 25-15. Now we face off against Sting Black again.

This time around, Sting was fired up for the rematch and they took it to use pretty good. We were not able to get a consistent first contact swing allowing Sting to continue to swing away. We played in survival mode the entire match and lost in 2.

Overall we are very happy with what we did this tournament. We see some room for improvement but we have accomplished so much already and it's only week 2!

15 BLACK

This weekend the team headed to Appleton for the Prep Dig Resolution Tournament. The snowstorm and ice caused a delay in the start, pushing our time back to 5pm on Saturday. We started the tournament strong and focused against NSVBC U15 Select-Blue. Our strong serving had them on their heels early, and we took the first set easily 25-15. The second set, NSVBC warmed up and our serve receive started to struggle, keeping us out of system and unable to find our middles. The team dug in and fought hard and took the second set in overtime 29-27.

The second match was against Elevate 15-Queen Bees. They were a tall, hard hitting and hard serving team. Serve receive struggled against two servers in particular who had a net skimming, hard fast float. Being out of system took our middles out of the game again, and we fell in two, 22-25, 14-25.

Sunday found a focused team, ready to avenge the loss from the day before. We took the court at 2pm against Wisconsin Ice 15-Purple. Our serve receive was dialed in and middles were back in the offense. The big blocking of Ava (MB) and Tori (MB) made hitting impossible for Ice, and the strong serving from Maddie (DS), Claire (LIB) and Amary (S) kept them out of system. The third match was ours, 25-11, 25-19.

 Ending 2-1 with a 4-2 set record sent us to the gold bracket, and the 4th seed overall. The excitement and energy fizzled out, as the tournament was way behind and we had a 3 hour wait to begin. Finally, the match against FC Elite 15-Blue began for the opportunity to take on the 1st seeded Sting White. Elite came out swinging hard and through our block, and even through our serve receive was strong, we had a hard time establishing our hitters against a tall and strong block. The team battled, but dropped the match in 2, 25-17, 25-19.

The loss gave us a chance to fight for 5th, and we would get our chance against the same team that beat us in pool play, Elevate 15-Queen Bees. The team was tired, but dialed in to seek revenge on the team that beat them. They took the opportunity to play excellent, disciplined volleyball. Great passing gave our setters and hitters opportunities to put down hard, smart shots. Elevate pushed back in the second set, but the momentum was all I AM. We took the match 25-12, 22-25, 15-12, and ended in 5th overall in the tournament. 

 #getthepin | Izzy (OH): Tournament MVP, Ava (MB): Over Pass Kill, Coach Montano: Iced