Durham Attack | Attack Rocks Cleveland

Cleveland rocks! Attack rocks! Put the two together and you have a great combination. Volleyball is huge in the OVR - with about 800 16U teams in Ohio alone, according to our hosts. Our girls had a great weekend, were pushed to the limit and showed a depth of character that allowed them to finish #1 and bring home the Gold medal.

The National Challenge was hosted at OhioNets, a private facility owned by entrepreneur Larry Vassil, who built an extension to his Ohio Soap Products facility to hold six volleyball courts. With two daughters playing at a high level, he wanted to give something back to the sport. Thanks Larry for hosting a great tournament.

Pool Play

We played solid in pool play, except perhaps for one game we dropped to a very good Renaissance team. We came first in our pool with three wins:

Attack vs. Free Spirit VBC- 25-6, 25-19
Attack vs. Renaissance - 25-21, 20-25, 15-10
Attack vs. Lakeland VBC Ice - 25-7, 25-14

We had a short break before power pools started.

Power Pool

We started the power pool with a good first match on Saturday against a big, strong Glass City team. Back again at 7:15 on a cold Sunday Am for two more power pool games, we came out hard and had the matches under control.

Attack vs. Glass City VBC - 25-19, 25-16
Attack vs. Cleveland Volleyball Company National Blue - 25-11, 25-18
Attack vs. Columbus Volleyball Academy - 25-13, 25-23

Finishing first in the power pool put Attack into the final four.

Semis

Semis were against the Cleveland Volleyball Company Black team, the home club. This is a great club, with 900 girls trying out this year for their teams. We had a good warm-up with every player hitting the ball consistently harder than I've ever seen. We were pumped. But CVC had good hitters and very strong defense - so it was a very even match. We started the match in traditional fashion, falling behind early in the first game, but this time we could not close the gap and lost 18-25. This was a good experience for the girls - we were in for a tough fight if we wanted to stay alive. We came out strong and won the second set 25-18.

We came out hard in the tie-breaker and were ahead 6-1 at one point. CVC battled back, and we had some unlucky calls, until late in the set we were down 14-11. But our team never dies, we battled back and thought we had clearly won the match 16-14 only to have a player who was off the court called on a net violation. Unruffled, we pounded home the next two points for a resounding win.

Attack vs Cleveland Volleyball Company Black - 18-25, 25-18, 18-16

Finals

Which brought us to a rematch with Columbus Volleyball Academy, a club staying in our hotel and with whom we had made a number of friends. Its a very good team, with the core together for four years now and a few new players. I don't have the exact scores for this one, to be honest I was too nervous. We started out slow again, it was neck and neck, until we pulled away to win 25-19?, 25-22. They're a great team and we wish them all the best this season.

Attack vs. Columbus Volleyball Academy - 25-19, 25-21

Go to Ohio

I watched the semi-final game from the balcony with Larry Vassil and learned a lot about volleyball in Ohio - it is huge. He really appreciated us traveling down to play at the tournament and although he was rooting for his home team, with his philanthropy in volleyball and other pursuits he is really in it for all the girls. He respected the quality of our team and our win. This was echoed by a number of parents from the toughest teams we played, who told me our girls were 'truly impressive'.

So it was a great experience for our girls. Very tough competition, which is why we went. Pushed to the limit to win the tournament. Nice teams, nice girls, which is a lot of what it should be about. Our girls had fun scorekeeping and calling lines after each of their matches, and got to meet girls on a number of other teams. Parents asked us when we are coming back. We'd like them to come here. And I'm sure we'll meet again, either here or there.

16U Black with our friends from Columbus Volleyball Academy

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