MVL opening tournament for women’s teams.

Venue: Woodchurch High School, Birkenhead. CH42 7AG

Time: 10:30am to 4:00pm

MVL annual curtain-raiser tournament set to get the season off to good start. This is the women’s competition but there is also a Mens competition on November 5th.

Wirral A: 

Team: Katie Leppington, Helens Hinch, Lily Bloomfield, Yan Xi Chen, Abi Larway, Lily Prosser, Liv Stewart, Sadie Capstick

Our girls finished 3rd in their qualifying pool but their performance was much better than in last Week’s U18 Grand Prix. Helena brought some dynamism and her energy (if not her serving) seemed to spark the rest of the team. Our passing was better, our serving was better, we scrambled more effectively, Yan Xi and Katie were able to dominate the net at times, and Liv, settling into the challenging setting role, was able to control the ball and find our hitters much more consistently than last week so there was a lot to be happy about. 

The games:

Despite a good start Wirral were 14-20 down in the first match against Chester Falcons until Abi put together an inspired run of serves, taking seven points to win the set 21-20, unfortunately we could repeat the performance in set 2. After stumbling against Liverpool University in the first set we came back strongly to win the second 21-18. The first set of the third match was lost to a really powerful run of serves from Wigan Seahawks, the eventual pool winners, but our girls fought back well and were unlucky not to get something out of the second set after a good runs of serves from Lily Prosser and Liv Stewart. 

All the games were competitive, we were always in with a chance, the standard of opposition was much higher than in the U18 Grand Prix last week but our girls raised their game to match. Overall a good day for team development.