Once again, Captain Jon and Coach Rune lead the Oxford Mixed to victories. This time Kerstin, Tim, Helen, Sam, Corne and Maite beat Spikeopaths 1 25 - 23, 25 - 20 followed by Maidenhead Mixed 25 - 18, 25 - 23. As Basingstoke Mixed Up has lost another match, Newbury remains our biggest rival.

Oxford Mixed: 11 - 1 - 34

Newbury Mixed: 10 - 2 - 32

Basingstoke Mixed Up: 8 - 4 - 25

Spikeopaths Mixed 2: 7 - 5 - 22

Maidenhead Mixed: 6 - 6 - 20

Spikeopaths Mixed 1: 5 - 7 - 18

Basingstoke Mixed: 5 - 7 -16

Spikeopaths Mixed 3: 1 -11 - 6

Farnborough Lions: 1 -11 - 3

(won matches - lost matches - league points)

At a quick glance it looks like close matches but I never really doubted our team. In the first set, Jon started up with a couple of good serves and we reached 7 -1 fairly easy. Then we made some silly mistakes but luckily Maite decided it was time for a genius short tip and Oxford Mixed was back on track. In the second set, Rune joined in and blocked Spikeopaths’ hitters, while Tim and Sam continued the high standard; they even delivered a successful tandem hit. Excellent idea Jon! During the match we had four serving mistakes but saying that nine of our serves were direct winners.

We continued the team effort against Maidenhead; Corne, Kerstin and Helen were passing and covering brilliantly, while Maite and Jon delivered some really good sets. The Oxford boys also managed to block Maidenhead s players and force them to hit out. Rune even had a few successful backcourt hits. In the second set, we didn t seem to be in gear and for a short period of time, things weren t working out. Once again Sam and Tim delivered a number of well-placed hits and we managed to close the deal. We had four serving mistakes in this match, while six of our serves were direct winners.

Maite and Helen were voted ‘Player of the Match’. Well done girls! (Jon, if you try harder you might achieve this one day)

The next match day is away on 15 March.

Yang

Despite how tasty it may sound, this is not the latest offer from your local sandwich shop. The last two weekends the Oxford Men’s team has won bumper-to-bumper double 2 - 0 victories. Last Sunday the team made a decisive display of where the strength resides in the northern end of the BVA league, beating Didcot and Newbury in a tense local derby. Only in the very last set against Newbury was there any doubt about the outcome, though, with the Oxford team still clinching it 25 - 23. This fixture also saw Martijn rejoin the team after another one of his long injury breaks - evidently he sees himself as the Andrew Flintoff of Oxfordshire volleyball - to once again rank among such famous names as Jon, Tim, Gerard, Corne, Tom and man of the match Neil.

This Saturday the Oxford team had to travel to Reading for an early start fixture against Spikeopaths 2 and Reading University, a fixture that had been rescheduled from the autumn programme. Despite Spikeopaths 2 and Reading University making up the tail end of the BVA league, easy victories should never be taken for granted - only last Sunday Reading University pulled a surprise win against the top team of the league, Maidenhead. Before playing Reading Uni, Oxford had the good fortune of warming up against Spikeopaths 2. Despite a disappointing display, a 2 - 0 victory was still secured with relative ease, to a large extent thanks to the Oxford outside attack of Marc and Tim. Also Neil deserves special mentioning, securing yet another player of the match nomination. Due to their key role, setters are natural choices for this honour, but with the nominations consistently befalling Neil, the conclusion on Jon must necessarily be `Could do better’. The next match was between Spikeopaths 2 and a Reading University team only fielding 5 players. After being summarily defeated, Reading University suffered a further decrease in numbers - allegedly due to a hangover - and Oxford could return home with a further 2 - 0 no contest victory bagged.

Rune

I am thrilled that Oxford Mixed is back at the top of the Berkshire league. With the wins over Spikeopaths Mixed 2 25-21, 25-23 and Farnborough Lions 25-11, 25-13, Newbury had to give up the top position (they also lost to Spikeopaths 1). We are now on 28 points with one defeat to Basingstoke Mixed Up and nine victories.

Oxford Mixed: 9/28
Newbury Mixed: 8/26
Basingstoke Mixed Up: 7/22
Spikeopaths Mixed 2: 6/19
Spikeopaths Mixed 1: 5/17
Maidenhead Mixed: 5/17
Basingstoke Mixed: 3/10
Spikeopaths Mixed 3:1/5
Farnborough Lions: 1/3

(number of won matches/league points)

As a new and exciting thing, I had decided to take notes on attacks and lost points but paying attention for 45+40 minutes turned out to be too much of a challenge. In the first match, the team (Jon, Tomas, Kerstin, Maite, Sam, Rune, Helen and Cornelius) had some good attacks and blocks, only three serving mistake, but overall the play lacked precision. In their defence, the hall was freezing cold. However, in the second set Oxford delivered a tenacious performance winning the set 25-23 after being down 18-21. Surprisingly a Spikeopaths player got the ‘Player of the Match’ - and it wasn’t their phantom player.

Against Farnborough, the stars were definitely, Rune and Corne. With 14 serves in the first set, Rune came close to beating Kerstin s record of 18 serves. A few balls dropped along our attack line and we had two serving mistakes in each set, but Corne to the rescue! Corne was all over the place throughout the match and had a number of well-placed hits. In the second set, Rune decided to put all the ladies on court with Corne and Jon and they really showed Farnborough how it is done. Once again Kerstin had some brilliant hits that must have impressed the referees as she was voted  Player of the Match  - this is a hat trick folks!

Thanks to Sam s family, Mark, Daniel and Andrey for the support. The next match day is at home on 22 February.

Oxford Mixed rules!

(Yang)

I don’t know if it’s due to the Haggis or the Whisky generously consumed by the whole mixed team on Saturday at Jeff’s but the 2 games played on Sunday in Reading by Sam, Corne, Jon, Kerstin, Rune, Helen, Tomas and me were of extremely good quality!

As a setter/occasional trainer, you have often seen/heard me complaining about the poor quality of our passing but this time I have nothing to complain about! It was so good that Jon and I didn’t even have to run and thus finished both matches almost completely dry! Admittedly the level of our adversaries Spikeos II and III was pretty low but despite this we often only managed to score victories by a tight margin or even to lose games in the past.

The first game against Spikeos III started quite relaxed since Kerstin scored the 17 first points of the match! By the way, I personally think that Kerstin should be exempted of any service training for a least one month considering the reliability and quality of her service! After Spikeos III finally managed to score a point and got the service back, they also managed to score 7 points until we finished the match after 13 minutes of play and only 4 players having served in our team…  easy! Thinking that it was unfair for the 2 last remaining players to not have the chance to serve, we decided to win the 2nd set only  25 to 13.

Oxford was refereeing the second match between the 2 home teams giving Kerstin and me the opportunity to practice our brand new referee skills. 
A task we tackled effortlessy and without even falling asleep!

Our second game against the supposedly stronger Spikeos II team didn’t really prove to be a challenge and after Jon helped us  take the lead with his service, Spikeos never really managed to catch up with us and let us win 25 to 11. The second set started with a tight score until Kerstin (yes she again!) helped us score 8 points leaving Spikeos II in the same position as team III.

By now, you will have guessed who has been voted player of the match.. But surprisingly not for the 1st match (the award was given to a Spikeos III player for a reason nobody really understood..), instead it was for the 2nd one.

Oxford is still second of the league right behind Newbury but I still don’t know why since we have exactly the same score as them…. Anyway.

Well done to everybody for this demonstration of Volley-ball and hopefully we’ll do just as well for our next games in 2 weeks time!

Maïté

(Regarding the points, our club geek, Rune, wrote a program to find out why Newbury is still in the lead. Apparently we are on the same league points but we are on 110 match points while Newbury is on 111 points. See you should not have given Spikeopaths 3 seven points! Yang).