The Pressure Mounts

NUVOC V Su Ragazzi II

How do you deal with pressure? That’s easy, you continue to do your job. That’s easy said………”just do your job”, but when the season is in its final stages, when you are leading the Championships and have a series of super tough games to play, just ‘doing your job’ is not such an easy thing to do.

The Craggs Sports Centre in Edinburgh was the venue for this second division match. Gerry McDonald is doing a good job of re-developing NUVOC Club, and after this match he spoke candidly about the encounter;

“The overall game play proved to be too much for NUVOC. The Su Ragazzi squad played consistent, good volleyball, excellent defense and good distribution of attacks. Deserved winners.”

The final score was 5 – 0, but that hid the reality of the game. The young Su Ragazzi players had to ‘grind-out’ this result. In competitive sport it’s not possible to sparkle every week, but it is possible to stick to the task, to demonstrate some resilience, to work hard, to make sure the systems for controlling the ball are supported – all of that happened.

Set one NUVOC were very uncertain and the 8 - 25 score line was a reflection of their slow start. Set 2 they put much more into the game, and the 18 – 25 score reflected that. Set three got really interesting around the 17 points each mark. Both teams tried to get a lead, build an advantage, but neither could do so. At 24-22 up the Su players could see the winning line, but NUVOC pulled the score back to 24 all. The gym at this point was noisy and tense, with the small but enthusiastic audience thoroughly enjoying the encounter. But a side out point, followed by a service ace won the set for the visitors.

In sets 4 and 5 Gerry ran his bench, and the Glasgow troops were hungry for the additional points so the sets didn’t take long to play and were won 12 – 25 and 2 – 15. Set 5 was memorable for a 12 point run on the back of Darren Martin’s serve………and we won’t talk about the jump-serve effort that finished the run – oops!

So how do you deal with pressure – Margaret Scott summed it up when she was interviewed after the match, she said;

“ Good effort all round by the boys. A well earned victory to take into next week”.

Roll on Saturday 8th March!