The only way is Essex

Day 2 in Essex done. A morning session of defense and an afternoon session of blocking. An intense day of competing. I love blocking but in order to get there this afternoon, we had to first focus on digging. Oh my! Defense is great an all, digging balls up high for the setter to run the offense, but it tends not to be a middles forte. It's all about the fire and desire to want to get every ball up. So although I may not be technically sound, if I throw my body around enough like our Libero, I'm sure to get something up! Easy enough. ; )

Blocking a ball has to be one of the best feelings in the world. I love just roofing another player, feeling the ball contact my hand at just the perfect place for it to go straight down! Nothing like it. A reaction after a block is clearly natural. Everyone celebrates blocks in different ways...someone might run around in a circle after a block, others throw there hands in the air, etc but no matter what the celebration is, everyone is smiling and celebrating with you. Although I love the feeling of the ball hitting my hand, if my teammate I'm blocking with or just a teammate blocking in general, gets a block, it's so exciting I feel like I celebrate more for them then when I do. Needless to say, I think it's the best part of volleyball.

Many players were challenging each other more at training today. Even if they don't notice they are, I felt like the environment was more competative than previous training sessions. We had trash talking, hitters testing the block wiping off hands, hitting seems, hitting high, etc. All in good nature the trash talking, we are ladies, and it made teammates wanting to block the ball even more. An example? One pair was challenging each other on whoever scored the least amount of points had to wash the dishes after dinner. Others, giving them the stare down through the net. Amazing how much more competition we can bring to drills.