Last weekend UNIS’ Junior Varsity Volleyball teams traveled to Ho Chi Minh City to play in the MRISA Volleyball tournament hosted by Saigon South International School. Though we didn’t win many games, we did make some headway in UNIS history. Here is a recap of events from the boys’ JV team perspective:

Day 1 – Qualifiers

The beginning of the first day was a little slow going. During our first game against NISC, we had a very close first set which ended 26-24 to them, and unfortunately we couldn’t recover from the loss and we lost the second set as well.

Our second match was against our Hanoi rivals from HIS. Now if you ever go up to any of the JV boys team and say “positivity”, the first thing they’ll do is scream “positivity” back at you, and then let out a chuckle. The reason they’ll all do this is because during the whole two sets of the 2nd game, I was acting overly positive on the court (to try to keep the attitude way up, so that last game’s mistake doesn’t repeat itself). Needless to say, I over exaggerated slightly (quite the understatement) and became almost like a coach on the court, except that I gave no real constructive criticism, only “GOOD JOB”s. This occurred to the point where I actually scared all of my teammates, who have all blamed my over enthusiasm for costing us our second game of the day.

Before our last game, our coach told us that he has a special plan for our final game that he made with our captain, Austin. He sent out the starting line-up, which was drastically different than our usual starters, and left us to speculate the plan’s intent.

During our game against ISHCMC, we played our entire first set with the new, slightly weaker line-up, and were beaten 25-19, which isn’t bad considering we were playing 1st place in our division. Then, during our second set, coach returned the line-up to the normal version we were used to, and though it was a very close game, we ended up winning the second set against ISHCMC thereby making history as the first UNIS JV team to win a set in the tournament! We played through the 3rd set, but were sadly beaten 15-10 in the end.

Day 2 – Playoffs

In a nutshell, we played the first place team and lost badly because two of our key players couldn’t play, lost to HIS in another matchup and lost against VIS in our final game of the day, giving a very sweet season a slightly sour aftertaste. On the bright side, the girls team made history of their own, and won their last game against VIS, making them the first UNIS girl’s JV team to win a set and a match in MRISA.

Though you may look at what I call historical events for UNIS in MRISA Senior and call it insignificant, I believe that big things are made through small steps, and UNIS has definitely made some big steps on the path to victories in MRISA and enhancing our volleyball program.