You win some, you lose some

Our first game was against a team from Thailand. We really didn't know what to expect- this was a team we'd never seen before. I think we underestimated them a little, because the match started with them getting four points right off the bat. The Thai girls were very loud, every time they scored a point they would scream. We had to calm our nerves a little and focus on taking care of the ball on our side. We lost the first set 17-21. But this gave us an opportunity to see what they were like. The next set went well for us, we beat them 21-16. Then in the third set, we were neck and neck until the very end. At one point we were down 12-14. It was our tough serving and changing up of our defensive strategy that gave us a 16-14 win! This match was so exciting to play and it felt so good to win!! But now it was time to look ahead to our next match. We had about an hour break before we had to play a Dutch team. We came back from a being down several points in the first set to bring it to 22-22. Unfortunately, because of some poor passing at the end, we lost the set 22-24. For the next set we tried to regroup. We had a lot of trouble controlling the basic skills like passing and setting that we really didn't play our game, and lost 13-21. The loss was really disappointing because we know we can play better than we did. This was the closest we'd come to making the main draw- we would have been in with this win. Now it's time to move forward and use the time we have here for some training sessions with other teams in order to prepare for the last tournament of our season. Next stop: Phuket!