Su Ragazzi Volleyball Club
The sun shone beautifully out of a crystal blue sky as the girls from Su Ragazzi II made their way along the M8 to Forrester High School in Edinburgh. Their mission was to play well and win, their opposition was Jets II, and their cheery smiles lit up the journey.
When we arrived the home side were busy putting up the court, they stayed busy at this for quite some time……..but finally they succeeded, the team of officials were assembled, the scorer pronounced himself ready and the match started. Su won the toss and Livia Amzu served 3 consecutive aces – Boom!
Jets managed a side out but couldn’t cope with Jade McKerracher’s serve either, and the score read 4 – 1. The Jets 2 ladies were representing one of Scotland’s biggest Clubs, so they were always going to fight back, and fight back they did, but the score crept up in our favour and read 17-10.
The pre-match talk had been of the importance of winning the serve-pass battle and we were, with every one of our servers scoring clusters of points. Jets called a time out at 24-15, and they did manage to move their score up to 19, but the inevitable happened with a great scoring hit from Kelsie Braidwood and the teams changed ends.
In the huddle we talked of maintaining our standard of performance, and we did. With Alice Haynes setting a considered and clever offence, and Sam Fowler delivering a series of power hits through the middle attack, there was never a doubt about which of the teams were winning. At 19-10 the girls were cruising. At 22-13 we were playing really well, and at 25-15 it was done.
In the huddle there were bright smiles, and lots of chatter from the players. They knew they were playing well. They knew that if they kept their work rate up they would emerge as winners, and they did. With Libero Emilia Vulpe passing like a dream, with Captain and off-setter Ina Leffering organising the side-out unit and scoring consistently the Jets simply had nowhere to go.
They worked hard, they tried to solve the problems that were being set for them by the girls from the West, and in set three they kept the points difference much tighter than the other two sets, but they could not stop our girls from winning the set and the match 25-23.
After the team cheers were competed and hands had been shaken the girls took stock of a sophisticated and successful demonstration of Su Ragazzi Volleyball. This was their last game of the season, and it was great that they finished their campaign with such an emphatic win, but even more significant was that they did in style, much to the delight of the small but very vociferous bunch of supporters.
Middle blocker Kelsie Braidwood summed up the feelings of the group when she stated, “We are going to be so awesome next year!”
