Cup final slips out of the hands of volleyball players Sudosa-Desto from Assen

Tears flowed after the last ball of a match that brought Sudosa-Desto close to a historic cup final. Actually, it all came down to that one ball at the end of the second set that Mark Afman’s team failed to score on set point.

The green brigade started the match excellently. Everything worked in the opening set. “I don’t believe a ball went wrong,” playmaker Danique Aardema summarized the first set. The serving pressure was so high that the team from Borne rarely or never managed to get a pass properly to the net.

The result was that the Assen team was awarded many easy points, and the Assen team’s blocking team was given plenty of time to adapt to the attackers. That level could not be maintained in the second set. Apollo 8 gained more control over the pass.

‘We won’t finish it’

“After that it went a bit slower, but we still got a set point in that set, but we didn’t finish it,” Aardema lamented. The set already seemed lost at 23-19, but Aardema and her fellow players turned that into a 25-24 lead. After which an open opportunity was not taken and Apollo 8 still won the second pass.

What followed was a real cup thriller. The best points were followed by strange mistakes and a lot of emotions about the decisions of the refereeing duo. The guests took another lead with a strong Maureen van der Woude at the net and libero Danique Hamming, who was almost impossible to pass in the backfield, playing a leading role.

And then things went wrong for the team from Assen. A strong serving series from Eline Mosselaar seemed to repair the damage in the fourth set. From 19-12 behind, the mid player gave her team a 20-19 lead, but again Sudosa-Desto let the home team escape.

‘Defeat hurts’

“I thought we were the better team, that’s why this defeat hurts so much. But ultimately you have to do it yourself. And we didn’t do that,” was Aardema’s harsh but justified conclusion. Who is completely done with volleyball.

“Let’s do something else first. Then we just have to perform stunts in the competition. Or stunt, we expect a lot from ourselves and in any case we start the A-pool with two points.” The first opponent in that A-pool is Apollo 8 again.

Her coach was also done with the volleyball game after the bitter defeat. “This defeat is hard. I am very proud of my team. Actually, I always had the feeling that we would make it.”

‘That is not possible without a title’

“I thought we were the better team today and you should win this match 3-0. Of course you know that a first set like that does not give a realistic picture of the balance of power, but we should have won today and we failed to do so.” Afman jokingly said that that is why he cannot stop at Sudosa-Desto yet. “That is of course not possible without a title.”