Volleyball 2004 Preseason Journal Part 3: Mary Beth Moore
8/15/2004 12:00:00 AM | Volleyball
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EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the third in a series of daily journals written by Crimson Tide volleyball players. The journals will give a first-hand account of their experiences as they prepare for the 2004 season, and give an inside look at Alabama Volleyball.
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For those of you who don’t know, today was our third day of preseason practice, and let me just say that it was a great day...for two reasons. The first is because we got better today, and we were so focused and intense throughout the entire practice. The second reason is that the coaches rewarded our hard work and good attitudes with a little time off.
To start practice today, Chris ran a ball control drill. The idea of this drill was to obviously work on our ball control, but to also help us communicate and play intelligently. For the first part of the drill we could only use our forearms to play the ball which meant that every contact we made including setting and attacking had be done by passing. The next parameter was only using your hands to play the ball. So if someone tipped it really short right over the net you couldn’t dive and play the ball with your forearms, you had to somehow get under it and use your hands to set it up. We eventually moved on to “regular style” volleyball where we were actually attacking the ball and digging. Big shout-out to my team who was the overall winner of the drill. The other team had to draw from Chris’s “deck of consequences” to find out their punishment.
For the remainder of practice we really worked on passing technique and learning who has what responsibilities in serve receive. After some instructions from Erich we broke up into groups of three and took a lot of passing reps. We would have a person toss the ball to the passer, moving them short, deep and from the sideline in, and the third person would act as the setter indicating whether the pass was good enough. We eventually moved on to a two person passing drill to work on passing together and communication within the seams.
After practice we headed to weight room to get in our workout for the day. Jami was there waiting on us with our workout papers in hand. She divided us up into pairs, except Crystal, Kory, and I had to be a group of three. After a good workout of hang cleans, shoulder exercises, abs, and...well, a lot of other stuff, we were done for the day.
In closing, I just want to say that I have never been a part of a team that was willing to work as hard as this team has already. If we keep improving the way we have over the summer and in the first 3 days of preseason, there will be no limits as to how far this team can go. I am so excited about this season and the extraordinary things we will accomplish. So keep working hard girls, it will all be worth it in the end. And of course...ROLL TIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mary Beth Moore
