After celebrating the holiday season across the country, the
Queen’s women’s volleyball team reunited on the 28th of December to
clean the rust off and get back into the game. From December 28th to
December 30th, we competed in a National Invitational Tournament
hosted by the University of Toronto.
It was easy to see that the team had been working hard in
the gym over the break. After two weeks of not practicing and lots of Christmas
turkey, the girls were looking fit on the court. However it took the Gaels a
while to feel comfortable with the game again. On Friday we went up against U
of T, a team we beat in the first half of the regular season. Unfortunately,
due to some unforced errors and hesitation on our part, U of T came out
victorious and left us to think about strategy for the coming days.
We played against the University of New Brunswick on
Saturday. Although UNB’s fast offence took the game, we started to see the
Gaels make some better decisions on the court.
Going into the final day of the tournament the girls vowed
to give the last game against The University of Sherbrooke everything we had.
After discussing some game plan in the team room, we felt ready to go and knew
it was now up to us to get the job done. The Gaels took the first set 25-23 and
definitely looked much better than the previous two days. Sherbrooke proved
they were not going to hand the game to us and won the second set 25-19. The
third set went to Queen’s after a battle resulting in a score of 27-25. Some
poor decisions on our part and strong offence from the opposition lead to a
25-14 victory for Sherbrooke. The fifth and final set showed the Gael’s true
colours. We fought hard for every point. Although the final result was in
Sherboorke’s favour, a win of 17-15, our team definitely built momentum to
bring back into the gym for the second half of the season.
With the holiday coming to a close and the team heading back
to Kingston, we know that we have a lot of work ahead if we want to finish strong.
The Gael’s are looking forward to competing against the top eight teams over
the course of January and February on the road to the playoffs.
Happy New Year!
