Sara’s last volleyball tournament was this past weekend. It was the Regional Finals and they were
playing awesome! They’ve had a up and
down kind of season. Lose big, win, big,
lose big win big, etc. This was their
last tournament and I know they wanted to go out with a bang! They played hard and worked so well
together. They kept each other’s spirits
up and they hung in there and won 1st place! I can’t tell you how proud we are of the whole
team!!!
The Final Match was kind of difficult. The referees had been pretty strict all day
and had overruled the line judges on out of bounds calls many times. In the final, this continued many times in our
team’s favor. The other team’s coach got
very upset, arguing with the ref and even throwing her papers down. The parents in the stands got into it too
yelling at their girls things like, “watch out, you’re playing everyone today!”
It was all very negative. The opposing team got frustrated and rattled,
their level of play dropped and they lost.
In the end, their coach told her team that the referees gave
us the game. At the awards ceremony,
they received their medals first and all of our team and parents clapped and
praised them. But when Sara’s team got
their awards, only a couple of their players and parents clapped. And this behavior was duly noted by Sara and
her teammates.
Now, the truth be told, these two teams were VERY well
matched. They had played each other
earlier in the day with Sara’s team winning but in three fairly close sets. So either team could have won the Final. I have to wonder what the outcome would have
been if the coach had handled the situation differently. With a positive attitude and encouragement to
move on and continue to play their best would they have persevered and won the
final match? I guess we’ll never
know. I pray one day they get to see
what a positive attitude can bring them.
