Devils still going strong!

Devils had a skeleton crew for the game against Brighton Teela, with Mel skiing, Agata at a pub quiz with the other mums (congratulations on second place and winning £79, the first round is on you at the next social!), Trees taking one for the team and scoring (thank you), and Paula studying hard.  That meant Em got to chill out on the bench having played beach volleyball for two hours followed by two more hours of 2 on 3 indoors!  Happily we had Gemma back in the fold playing in the middle with Brinee, Chantelle and Amy through the outside and Sintija and Robyn opposite and setter.

In the first set Devils had their traditional slow start and were 5 points down quickly, with Teela playing and serving well.  As always Sintija lead by example, always cajoling the team, calling for the ball and putting in huge amounts of effort.  Once Gemma stepped up to with her new power serves Devils were back in the mix at 6-5 up and they slowly pulled away from there.  Amy's bullet serves added four more points with Brinee helping through dominating the net.  When Gemma got to front court she showed what Devils had been missing making five or six big blocks. Devils took the first set 25-14.

The same team started the second set cutting out a number of errors and serving well.  Robyn front court was keen to get in on the action stealing a few first balls, luckily they were good passes and Sintija enjoyed having the opportunity to set. Chantelle calling for pipe balls used the back court attack effectively.  This was a much tighter set with Teela covering the court well and putting Devils under pressure with consistent serving and good work front court.  Again Amy's serve was effective and front court Brinee and Chantelle were picking up the points, which lead to a closer 25-21 win for Devils.

For a change there were only five supporter for a home game, while Carl looked like he had fallen asleep at one end and Craig was unusually quiet without his partner in crime, the two Latvians continued to create more noise that I thought was humanly possible!

In the third set Sintija and Brinee found their serving shoes from last Monday building a lead early on that they didn't look like relinquishing.   There were a couple of wobbles, but Chantelle was focused on winning in straight sets and rallied the troops covering corner to corner, which in turn made everyone else pick up their game, ensuring that Devils won the key (and some very long) rallies.  Robyn was setting well to Sintija and the middles which they converted into points and soon the third set was over 25-14.

Chantelle was given the MVP award after doing a fantastic job playing at six covering the whole of the back court, consistently serving well and hitting a few tasty spikes.

A big thank you to Iain, Steve, Dani and Chantelle's Mum for ensuring that the game could take place with a full complement of officials! Only one local league game to go - Dolphins1 on 6th April!