When does 20 minutes = 8 minutes?

February 8, 2010 | By Patrick | Filed in: HKS, Volleyball.

Another tournament visited, another tough day on the court. UW-Platteville was the site of last weekend’s volleyball tournament for the Wisconsin Performance 16s Black team. Leaving the house at 7, we made the trek to Platteville (never been) and found the fieldhouse easily – Thank you, Garmin.

To all tournament hosts: Could we trouble you for some open wi-fi at these things? We have lots of time to kill. kthxbye

Anyway, of the 8 teams (16’s) that were there, we finished 8th. Ugh. I know it’s not all about winning. I know the goal is to improve as a player week after week. Team improvement should naturally follow, right? The thing is, we ARE getting better in small increments. The frustrating part is that the other teams are also getting better during this time. As they say, it’s an uphill battle.

In an effort to improve the team, Coach Emily asked that I record some games. She thought, and I agree, that it would be helpful to show it to the girls and have them see what we all see. Move your feet! Go get it! Call it!

For each game in the post-pool play tournament, I set up my camera at two different vantage points and recorded the action. Each game lasts about 20-25 minutes of real time. Knowing that YouTube videos can only be 10 minutes long, I was afraid I’d have to chop the footage up into multiple uploads. Not to worry. Upon editing the clips down to action-only sequences, there was really only about 8 minutes of footage per game. Obviously, not too many long rallies.

If you dare to subject yourself, feel free. We wear white with red trim – Hannah is number 61 (setter).

Game 1:

[youtube x78VCP2aspQ 560 340]

Game 2:

To end this mini-rant on a positive note, I must commend my daughter. In reviewing the action again and again (*eyeroll*), I couldn’t help but pick up on the fact that she was always there to help her teammates up, she clapped words of encouragement, and she tried to keep the team fired up – a chore in any environment, especially true that day. On the way home she commented how she really doesn’t care about wins and losses, she just wants to improve.
OK, she’s got it right. I’ll shut up now.

(In case you care, I captured the HD footage on my Canon Vixia HF100 camera and downloaded the *.m2ts files to my computer. They’re great quality for TV, but way too big and unwieldy for a condensed 3-4 inch YouTube window. I converted them to much smaller *.m4v files using AVS Video Converter, then assembled and chopped them together using Adobe Premiere Elements. I could have put transitions and themes and other fancy stuff in, but that would just take time.)


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