From the moment the whistle blew in the 1st set, KE found itself on the back foot. Unable to find any sort of consistency in their play, the ladies soon found themselves 1-7 down. The lack of communication and poor coordination were paramount to our poor performance in the set. Playing in a light drizzle, it seemed like we were intent on being washed away by our opposition. Whilst most of the set was one that is best forgotten from a KE perspective, we did have a couple of bright points. A timeout and a team talk saw us win 4 more points even as we were routed 9-25, with the best point (that was won by us) of the set coming with the score at 8-23.

The break saw a pep-talk given by Kim to the players, with JCRC president, Terence, and Sports Sec, Dominic, providing valuable advice that saw a new determination setting in. KE took to the court looking more relaxed and immediately rushed to a 4-2 lead. An almost comic moment ensued with our beloved Shaz in the line of fire of an a stray volleyball as he clicked away on his digital camera. The set saw the kind of play we should have started with from the get go as we maintained a lead up to 14-14. The game plan of keeping it simple and getting the ball into the opponent’s court seemed to have been paying dividends before KR’s no. 26, arguably their star player, took the game away from us with a number of exemplary spikes and dinks (something our players were sorely bereft of in their repertoire of shots). Though KR’s momentum seemed to have won them the match, they were given a scare when KE fought back to score 4 points on the trot to bring them to 22-23. However, KR held their nerves and deservedly, no. 26 brought down the curtain on us with the set ending at 22-25.

Although the defeat was rankling, we can derive solace from the fact that we have a relatively new team with only 2 experienced players (Kim and Vila) and future forays can only yield better results. It was also heartening to see the vociferous support from the small crowd of KE supporters and despite the loss, the mood amongst our players was still upbeat!