Plucky volleyball firsts exit Cup in last 16 after superb run
At the end of an exciting BUCS Cup run, men’s volleyball captain Jack Butcher reports on a season’s best team performance against a highly-rated Leeds Met side.
The Mens’ volleyball team travelled to Leeds Met yesterday and gave our performance of the season against the recently crowned Student Cup Champions. The game came in the BUCS Championships last 16, a knock-out round for Division 1 teams with top-3 league finishes in their respective regions. Having already had to contend with the best two teams in the country – Leeds Met and Sheffield Hallam – in our league season, we were inexplicably drawn against one of them again for this supposedly inter-regional competition.
After a lacklustre performance against the Met two weeks ago in the league, we were determined to do ourselves justice on the big stage and didn’t disappoint. Encouraged by the return of experienced veteran Pietro Galli, the standard of volleyball was high and the team-spirit unrecognisable from the previous fixture. Despite letting Met open up a 5-point advantage at the start of the first set, we stuck to the task with some excellent backcourt defence and never let them pull away. As the set progressed, our confidence continued to increase as we piled on the pressure with some brutal attacks of our own. When Met finally closed out the set 25-18, the relieved expressions on their faces showed that they weren’t expecting such a battle.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t maintain that level of performance in the second set and struggled to handle the tactical float serves and brutal outside attacks. Never really finding our rhythm, we quickly went down 25-11. This seemed to shell-shock the team going into the third set and by the time we called our first time-out we were 10-2 behind and at risk of rolling over meekly. However, despite the prospect of an apparently inevitable defeat looming, we put in a remarkable fight-back with a run that brought us to within 2 points and resurrected the scared looks from the opposition that we had induced in the first set. Even as Met pulled away again and were on the verge of closing out the match, we never laid down, threw our bodies on the line and continued to play aggressively in defence and attack with Josh Chipman producing a couple of stunning spikes late on.
While it’s always disappointing to lose, the manner of defeat against a team of Leeds Met’s calibre highlighted both the spirit and the technical ability within our team. To reach the final 16 in the country is a fantastic achievement and had we been drawn against anyone other than “the big 2” we would have been confident to progress to the finals weekend and really compete for a top-3 finish. We can now focus all our resources on crushing Lancaster at Roses, which on the basis of our form in this match, should be some spectacle!
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