We had volleyball again last night. Our match was against one of the teams that was just a couple spots ahead of us in the standings, and they were one of the best teams we’ve played so far, if not the best. With that said, I still think we should have won more than the one game that we did win.

What really hurt us are their stupid rules and the officiating. Yes, the list of dumb rules is continuously growing. There are three courts in a row at this place, and all of our games take place in the middle court. When a ball from one of the other courts comes into your court, the play at your court is blown dead. It would be nice if it just happened automatically, but instead it is at the ref’s discretion. This got us a couple of times, but didn’t hurt us nearly as bad as the timing rule.

Each game is over when one team gets 25 points or when 15 minutes has past. The 15 minutes is only seen by the ref, and is subject to his discretion once again. Well he ended the second game with us down by one point and it being our serve. He was faced with the same situation in the third game, but vice versa, with us winning by a couple points and their serve. Time should have been called very soon, but he made a bad line call that gave the other team a point, leaving us up by one. He then let the other team serve again, and they ended up with another point tying the game. He then said that the next point would win, and guess who got that point? The other team.

After winning the first game, we lost the next two when we should have easily won at least one of those. It is just a recreation league, but it is still frustrating. We are now 7-8 overall, and tied for 6th place. As I mentioned before, we still have a match next week against a team that is now 8-7. It should be a good one!