Volleyball players take heart after clash with “man mountains”
Adam Guest
The Shetland volleyball players are taking heart from their first performance after a strong end to their opening match against “man mountains” Bermuda last night in the island games.
It was the team’s first island games appearance since 2005 and the boys in blue faced some towering counterparts in the Bermuda side.
Shetland went down 25-18, 25-12 and 25-21.
Though Joshua Morrison said it was the first time a lot of the players had competed at the island games.
“We were a little bit slow to get started and we lost a couple of cheap points but we kicked on really, really well and we matched them point for point right up until the high end of the [first] set, the business end.”
“They were throwing some big attacks at us,” he said.
“Some of it was having some success, a lot of it we were able to deal with.
“We were much the same. We had a lot of good attacks, a lot of good defending, blocking their attacks.”
Morrison said the team was a little on edge at the end of the first set and the Bermuda players were on the ascendancy in the second.
At 16-3 the boys let the set go and focused on building momentum for the third.
In the final set Morrison said the team matched the Bermuda players point for point, right until the crunch period of the game.
Despite the defeat, he agreed there were a lot of positives to take from the performance.
“They are just man mountains of guys. They’re six feet five, and able to jump a foot-and-a-half, two-foot in the air.”
“They are just so fast and so strong, they’re big, big athletes.
“But as I say [it was] our first game in 10 years and our players’ first game, we take a lot of heart from that.”
Today the boys face Åland and they had the chance to see their opponents in action yesterday.
“If we can match what we did… keep our heads a little bit towards the end of the set, we can certainly kick on and hopefully win some sets, maybe even a game or too.”
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