Back on the court with Jason Tanaka
8/4/2008 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
Aug. 4, 2008
TUCSON, Ariz. -Greetings! I have just returned from another fun two weeks working with USA Volleyball. After a furious few days of practice we were finally ready for tournament play. I was coaching the USA Youth Blue team along with Melissa Wolter. We were all excited for the tournament to begin because it would be the first time that we played against teams that were not associated with our group of athletes. We were also playing in the older age division with the Women's Junior International division.
Our first match was against the Iroquois Empire Region, which is located in the northeast area of the United States. We won first set 25-19, which helped us get the nerves out of our system. We went on to win the match, taking games two and three by scores of 25-15, 25-10.
We faced off against a team from the Florida region in our second match. This was a special match for our teams since we played on court one. Playing on court one meant we would have an announcer and that the referees were being evaluated for international status. From the start of the match my players played very hard. They really did a great job making adjustments to take advantage of the weaknesses of Team Florida. We won the match 25-19, 25-16, 25-17 to finish the day 2-0.
Day two set up to be a tough day for us as we were slated to play Peru and our USA Youth Red team. Our first match of the day came against Peru. It was an exciting first set with my team coming out on top, 25-23. We kept the momentum going, claiming a 25-16 game two victory. Peru stormed back, winning the next two sets, 25-16 and 26-16 to force a fifth game. I felt like we settled down during the break and played very focused. We jumped out to an 8-3 lead ahead of the side change. Things went downhill from there. We were assessed a yellow card out of the break, giving Peru the ball down only 8-4. I thought we weathered the tough break as we pushed the score to 14-10. Peru stormed back with the next five points. On match point for Peru we were called a double on my middle, handing us a tough loss.
Heading into the second match of the day, I thought my team had a great attitude despite the tough loss earlier. We played a good match, but came up short against the top team in our division, the Red team, losing 24-26, 25-27, 12-25. Each USA Volleyball division is divided up into three teams with Red being the top team, followed by White then Blue.
On Day three our first match was against Northern California. We had had the opportunity to watch Northern California play a couple of other matches in the tournament and I knew we had to match up one of our outsides with their shorter setter. The match-up worked as we won 25-15, 25-19, 25-16. The victory set up a match against our USA Junior White team. After a hard-fought match, the Junior White team prevailed, 21-25, 20-25, 25-27. The loss dropped our record to 3-3 in the tournament.
On the final day of the High Performance tournament we fought hard but lost to out USA Youth White team in four sets and well as to Club Nova a team from Canada.
As a whole, I was pleased with how my team performed. I thought they fought very hard. With this being the first year of the Youth age cycle, they will all have one year under their belt for next year. It was a privilege to work with the USA Youth Volleyball team for the 11 days we were in Tucson, Ariz.
I would like to say thanks to the Youth team staff: Shelton Collier, Melissa Wolter, Sam Shweisky, Steve Walker, Christie Landry, Kristina Hernandez, Daryl Tamashiro, Scott Blockmon, Louella Maxwell, and Katie Virtue. They made this HP camp one of the best that I have been at, but for now I am looking forward to a great 2008 season with the TCU Horned Frogs.
GO FROGS!
