Riga Women's First team unbeaten record ends

Riga vs City of Wolverhampton

1-3 (25-21; 24-26; 24-26; 21-25)

Match Report by Alex Smith

On Saturday, Riga's First Team women went to play long time midland rivals Wolverhampton.  Last season Wolves won both fixtures by 2 points in the 5th sets, and this season Wolves were the only other undefeated team until last week.  Riga went into the game confident though, knowing how strong the squad is this year.

Wolverhampton opened on their home court strongly, and Riga quickly found themselves a few points down, but did not panic and following a serving run by Alex Smith, the team bounced back into the lead.  Good setting from Lisa Purcell enabled the middle attack to open up and Juliane Laetsch was too strong for the Wolverhampton team to match.  Riga took the first set 25-21.

Riga changed ends relieved to have fought back into the set and settled into the match taking a 5 point lead.  Through solid blocking from Michele Preyer, the lead was extended to 8 points.  Unfortunately, Riga rested on their laurels too early and Wolverhampton upped their game.  Unable to match them, Riga lost the lead but kept fighting through to the last points but narrowly dropped the set 26-24.

Bizarrely, the third set followed an almost identical trend, with Riga pulling a big lead and then Wolverhampton's Polish international player running too many combinations and punishing a shorter front line of Riga's meaning the set was again lost 26-24.

In the final set, despite good hitting from Anna Meister and Julia Werdich, Wolverhampton pulled through to take the game 25-21 and the match 3-1.

The Riga team have taken many lessons from the game and are already looking forward to the return match when they hope to level the score.

MVP - Alex Smith