Last Friday evening, the boys of Heren 5 had quite the reason to celebrate after an exciting 5-set match against the second Delft team in their pool. This would be the first time the crew would have to make the game decisions themselves, as coach/trainer Vincent Sikkes had an away match against Kalinko Den Haag. During the trainings and lead up to the Heren 5 match, Sikkes instructed the team to concentrate on one major goal throughout the duration of the match: Keep the ball in play.
Set 1 began with a short lead for Punch Delft. It was noticeable just from the warmup, that Punch had a number of players who could hit and serve with some power. The first set of the match featured some of the longest rallies that Heren 5 had experienced in game yet. This was a trend that would be seen throughout the duration of the match. The score had reached a back and forth state, with Punch approaching the end of the set with one of their best servers firing away at the defense. A timeout was called to try to shake him, but was unsuccessful. The first set had gone to Punch 23-25. The takeaways were clear, keep the ball in play, chase everything, and points will be scored.
Witnessing the flow of the match, team captain Andrew would be seen during the coming sets standing/shouting from the bench as he felt this would give him better control over the match with regards to timeouts/rotations, and to better gauge energy levels and positions for the upcoming sets. All available players were used to help generate points in the coming sets. Zahour was able to score from the outside position after some well placed tips to get past the defense. Bastiaan, in only his second game, demonstrated a strong ability to set the ball into ideal conditions for the attackers to put the pressure on. Kept on deck were Borja and Ray, who played great in tandem together and were used to swap out Zahour and Bastiaan later in the sets. Borja stayed true to the overall objective of the match, and chased down some seriously hard to receive hits. Yusuf was pushed to his limit by the captain who wanted to keep him in as long as possible due to his excellent services and setting abilities. Even when benched, Yusuf was able to keep the energy going with his amazing bench cheering abilities. Frederic was able to swap Yusuf out in a pinch, and continued his trend of making some amazing plays at the net with some offensive hits and a couple of blocks. Ivan – Heren 5’s canon arm during the services, was strategically placed early in the serving rotations to run the score up early. Rafael, who was just coming off a shoulder injury, still provided a number of offensive plays with some very explosive jumps leading into misleading tips for the opposing defense.
Is anyone hungry? Heren 5’s MVP of the match will undoubtedly go to Ray, who served up an absolute banger of a pancake, the likes of which had not yet been seen by the team. Not only was Ray an absolute beast on the defense, popping up some of the trickiest of hits, his offensive game was something remarkable. Supported with some great sets, Ray was able to smash some absolute bullets past the block and into the seams of the defensive players on the opposing court, which was followed by uproar from the bench and supporters in the crowd. One such supporter was Nigel, the newest member to Heren 5, who brought with him an amazing hype squad to keep the momentum going.
After 4 sets of some very long rallies, the match would be tied at 2-2, meaning a very intense 5th set was about to be played. A panicked Andrew quickly ran through his options to assemble a starting rotation that could get a big jump on the scoreboard. Some cheeky tips and services led to exactly that, a sharp 10-3 lead that gave Heren 5 a solid amount of wiggle room to secure the victory. Then came Punch’s star server, who made that gap smaller, and smaller… and smaller. Surely a timeout would shake him up a little, right? The heavy handed heaters kept coming, but the team stayed on top of the overall objective: Pop the ball up, and keep the ball in play. Let the opposing team make the mistakes. The score was 10-14, when a hard hit ball came crashing into Delft’s side of the net, and slowly dropped to the ground.
The Heren 5 boys had done it, they kept the ball in play, and with that earned their first victory!
Thanks to trainer Sikkes for drilling us on the skills needed to keep a rally going. A much needed thank you to Raphael’s parents, who bailed us out during our warmup. (There may or may not have been a ball bag that was forgotten.)
Amazing crowd, and we’re excited to have Lucas and Nigel on the future roster. Heren 5 will continue to bring the energy, and we look forward to the next match!