Tendring Ladies 1 - 3 Polonia

Report by Chris Frost

After a promising finish to last season, excitement was high for the start of the new season at Tendring. With the squad only being together for 2 sessions, a first game, home fixture against National Cup winners, Polonia Sideout London was going to be a very tough challenge. A strong team that will be looking to win the league no doubt after a very successful season last year.

With the arrivals of 3 new players to the Tendring team; Chaniel Nelson, Jacky Skeen & Karis Watson the team was keen to test themselves against a strong Polonia side and to judge where they were at after such a short pre-season. With a crowd of over 100 people and more watching on the live stream, the atmosphere at the Essex University was buzzing, after having 2 games prior to the match.

Tension was high and nerves were present in the young Tendring side. Whilst Polonia’s experience enabled them to take advantage of this and gain a good start to the match. Polonia instantly put Tendring under pressure throughout the first set with high quality serves from the service line and a constantly strong serve receive thanks to Libero, Karolina Tokarczyk, who was voted MVP for Polonia. Strong block defense and wing hitting too enabled them to maintain a consistent advantage over Tendring and they were able to finish the first set 27-25.

Tendring were able to bounce back and showed good character after narrowly losing the first set. With a more stable serve reception led by the young Amelia Stamp, Tendring were able to flip proceedings and gain the advantage early on. With an excellent service run by Laura Hodgkinson helped by a well ran offence by Tendring’ MVP, Molly Van Essen. Tendring were able to take a significantly lead in the second set and finish by taking the set 25-16.

During the third and fourth sets, Polonia were able to regain the advantage that they had in the first set with some strong powerful hitting from their wing players. With more noise and confidence growing in the Polonia camp they were able to win the big points once again which always gave them the slight upper hand in the contest. Some superb rallies were played out with many bodies scrambling for the ball from both teams, they continued to impress the big crowd in attendance.

With loud noise and applause going to both teams, the strong Polonia team were victorious. They finishing the third set 25-21, and the fourth set 25-18 Congratulations go to Polonia Sideout London, all at Tendring wish the best of luck for you for the season ahead!