After five wins showing no mercy to opponents, the USTC men’s volleyball team earned the third place in the Anhui Province Student Sports League. Women’s team took the eighth place, pushing them farther than they have ever gone before.
USTC volleyball team members. (Image by the USTC volleyball team)
This competition was divided into A, B, C groups depending on players’ level, and both men’s and women’s teams took part in A group, led by coach SI Youzhi and CUI Xia respectively. The 30-team event got underway with 4 round matches at Chaohu University gymnasium from December 4 to 10.
In the first round of the game, the men's team defeated their opponents with solid defense and hard offense. The men's team won 3-0 in every game and entered the quarterfinals.
The men’s team faced off against the team from Anhui Medical University in the quarterfinal round. Before this game, the two teams had a friendly match. Although the USTC lost that game at the time, they took the lead in the first set and never lost this time.
However, the men’s team suffered failure to the last year’s champion, Anhui Agricultural University (AAU), in the semifinals. Facing the experienced opponent, boys started the first set with an early lead and kept pressure. But the AAU battled back and prevailed with a 28-26 victory. The second set started out neck and neck, USTC tried even the score for several times. Unfortunately, our opposite hitter twisted his ankle after a spike, after which AAU took the lead and would not allow the visitors to regain it. This gave AAU a 3-0 victory.
Sweeping away the haze of failure, USTC went ahead to fight against Anhui University of Chinese Medicine, and won the finals at 3-0, ending this competition in third place. All players hugged together in yelling, screaming and cheering after they scored the last point of the match.
The USTC men’s volleyball team won third place. (Image by the USTC volleyball team)
Every player serves a unique role in the success of the team: the back row’s perfect defense creates opportunities for team to offense; the setter has a delicate touch to set the ball perfectly for hitters; hitters’ defensive responsibility to dig tipped ball also matters; servers try to avoid serving error and break opponent’s serve receive pass; blockers form the first line of defense against the opposing team’s hits; substitutes cheer for their teammates.
Both men’s and women’s teams look forward to next year’s competition.
(Written by HOU Luyao, edited by LI Xiaoxi, USTC News Center)
