This weekend our girls traveled to Kansas City, Missouri to play in the Asics Show Me Qualifier. Our girls were placed in a tough pool the first day finishing 1-2 on the first day. This pool included teams that finished 65th, 17th, and 5th. A tough draw on the first day in a field of 112 teams. Our girls battled hard but came up short. A nice trip to Bravo for some Italian cleared our minds and we came back for some team bonding.

The next day we came out and finished 2-1 and through some miraculous tie breaker (still not sure how this happened) we finished first in our pool to earn a trip to Flight 1. An interesting final match was played where if we won we finished 1st, if we lost in 3 we finished 3rd and if we lost in 2 we finished 4th. An exciting match to say the least, the girls ended up winning in three. After Hannah Walker, Maggie Newberry and Bri Whitener all had great hits, the girls earned an ice cream party through a promise from the coaches.

Our final day we came out a little slow losing the first set 9-25 against Precision. They finished their second day 3-0, sweeping through their pool. They were a tough team but we were able to battle back and win the second set. We came out strong in the second set with an 8-3 lead when Precision caught fire. Every ball they touched was a kill and we couldn’t find a way to score like we were earlier. We finished losing the third set 11-15.

While we didn’t finish where we wanted, we were able to grow together as a team. We learned of our weakness and we are ready to correct them. We have one practice before heading to the bid event this weekend where we are hoping to outperform our rankings. The girls were upset but seemed focused on working hard in practice and coming out strong this weekend.