Volleyball Awesome

Last week CC traveled to China for administrative meetings, and I single-mommed it all week. The girls had a volleyball tournament. This year, Firstborn is playing for her 3rd year, Twinkle Toes also earned her way to a solid spot on the team, and even Miss Middler is on the team! Originally 7th graders were not going to be on the Varsity team, but the coach agreed to let them come and just practice to build up skills. Miss Middler worked hard, got her serve spot on, and she was allowed to have a uniform.

We showed up early to watch the competition, which scared our girls to death. The other teams were dominating the court. They walked out for the pre-game pep talk with looks of fear.

Here's Firstborn and her awesome coach.

Before the game, the girls huddled to pray.  This was the neatest thing of the day, considering where we are.

And then our girls came out and acted like one of those dominating teams! They shocked us all. Serves in, bump-set-spike. They had REALLY improved. Firstborn has nailed her spike this year. Twinkle Toes served and bumped it back so well, I kept wondering what she ate over the summer. A new rule is that you can kick the ball to keep it up (can you imagine if we had tried that back in the 80's?!) Twinkle relies on that when she can't get to the ball, and believe it or not, it works for her sometimes. Her coach tries to suppress the grin and reprimands her for the very unreliable kick. But once that day her foot pulled the ball up and saved the day. Her face went into her hands, the giggle started, and I told her later maybe I needed to run a reminder in the morning news at school that she was in volleyball not soccer.

They did not win, but they came very close with scores like 25-18. They played a 3rd extra game with subs only and beat 'em!

And then on the last game, the coach subbed in my little baby!!! She pulled her in to serve, but then let her play some. I can't tell you how much fun it was to watch my 3 Singapore girls all playing together. It was a first.

I told them afterward I had to have a picture to commemorate it. They quickly lined up in 'baby order' as we call it.

And their sweet Papa flew in at 8AM after spending the night in the Istanbul airport, but he wasn't about to miss the Saturday game. He treated his volleyball girls to a US Base Baskin Robbins ice cream.

Way to go, girls!!!