Veenendaal competition day
In the early Sunday morning (when most Rotterdam’ers were still asleep) we started our one-hour journey to the first outdoor matches in the third division this year. Since everyone trusted Joep’s weather forecast of 95% rain chance, we packed a lot of changing clothes (except for Boris). So, we drove with two fully packed cars to Veenendaal, where we arrived in cold weather and were welcomed in a warm ‘sports cafeteria’ with some opera-like music, which did not help a lot with waking up.
Vertigo 1
We started the first match against Vertigo 1, who were more difficult opponents than expected. Just before half time we were losing 8-3, but caught up to only a one point difference (11-10) in the second match half. Unfortunately, we could not keep the pressure and lost 15-10 in the end. Even though we were a bit disappointed, we were happy that it was sunny most of the time (Joep’s weather forecast was wrong!) and prepared some improved offense strategies for the upcoming match.
Break time
During the break we boosted our bodies with some nice food, mostly with very nice chocolate-peanuts. Also the music in the room changed and was more energizing, although some of our team members, especially James, were still not entirely satisfied with it.
Veenendaal Tijgers
In the second match we played against the Veenendaal Tijgers. As expected they had a strong defence as well as tall and fast guys in the offense. This made the game already quite difficult and losing one of our players to a very important flight to the States after the first game did not help either, as we were then left with only one sub. Despite all this, we had some nicely played points with a good handler game and a strong defence. This was also influenced by the typical April weather: at some point during the game hail storms were causing less sight, but at the same time also more mistakes of the opponents. But even though we were able to win some points back, we still lost 15-4 in the end.
Break again
The second break was quite long and everybody was almost asleep or just chilling. But the most important topic was the soccer game Feyenoord-Utrecht that started in the evening of the same day. Luckily the game started late, so we were able to get through Rotterdam without traffic and could still watch the game at home. Most importantly however, Feyenoord won and Rotterdam did not get trashed completely!
UFO 2
The third and last match of the day was against UFO 2. After losing the first two games, the only possibility how to stay in the third division was by winning this game. The match was very nice and spirited with an attitude to play for playing’s sake and only some calls, which were valid. So the game was a lot enjoyed by both teams, especially by our team, since we won the first game of the whole day (15-9). However, we had one last important duty to fulfil after the game had ended: we needed to eliminate some confusion in the opponent team, because James is not Oscar, but James.
So…
Overall, we had a challenging but nice second outdoor match day. We ran a lot due to a little number of subs, the weather was sunnier and less rainy than expected and we were able to practice/improve some offense strategies as well as to adjust our defence to each single opponent team. And once more our team represented the women of the open outdoor competition, since we had the only two ladies on the line within the whole third division.