No momentum, no points

Created: 02/28/2022, 07:00

There is will and commitment, but there is a lack of experience and moments of success: the second division players of TSV Grafing (from left) Jannik Birkholz, Noah Henkel, Paul Koch, Moritz Schnödt, Johannes Becker and Luis Wieser.

© stefan rossmann

Benedikt Doranth had hoped for a three-digit number of spectators and a set win from the second division home game against TSV Mimmenhausen.

There was a 0:3 bankruptcy and the hopes of the Grafinger player coach were disappointed.

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- Just 50 fans wrapped up in hats and coats in the Jahnsporthalle, which is notoriously ice-cold on weekends, to witness a quite expected defeat of the Bärenstadt team.

"The switched off heating has been a disaster for years, which even our team manager as deputy mayor seems to have no influence on.

However, I would have expected a bit more”, Bendikt Doranth's statement on Saturday evening was understood as a reply to both of his disappointed hopes.

"It's cool that so many spectators came after last year, when they were very spoiled by the many victories." After all, even record-breaking soccer champions FC Bayern would lose a number of "successful fans" if, as the defending champion after 19 match days only four wins at the bottom of the table.

Grafing lacks experience and a sense of achievement

The Grafingers, who were once again badly understaffed, were still able to stand up to the highly favored guests from Lake Constance at times.

The later TSV MVP Johannes Becker trumped his former teammates in the middle block right from the start and put Grafing in the lead for the first time at Doranth's side.

"Johannes was really good in the first leg and together with Noah Henkel in the middle, who was our problem child for a long time, a real ray of hope!"

Doranth himself was back on the table after a nearly five-month break from competition, but was no longer able to counter the increasing serve pressure from the guests in combination with the selective "wrong failure avoidance strategy" in his own young ranks towards the end of the sentence (19:25).

“We always keep up well in terms of play, technique and athletics. 

Benedikt Doranth, player-coach of the Grafingen second division volleyball players

The second round went to Mimmenhausen with exactly the same result.

But here, too, there would have been more for Grafinger, "if we didn't always have to chase after a deficit," says Doranth.

"Because we always do our series of points." Thanks to spectacular rescue reflexes by Libero Korbinian Hess, intermediate spurts give a brief boost (from 2:8 to 6:9).

But they cost a lot of physical and mental strength if you don't even get a tie - 19:25.

"In the third set we were ahead once again, but we fell too far behind again at the beginning," concluded Doranth: "Then turning this momentum in the result worked well last year with the old hands." In the end, it was missing Youngsters with experience and a sense of achievement.

But by no means in terms of quality.

“We always keep up well in terms of play, technique and athletics.

Things are going much better now than at the start of the season.

Unfortunately it will be over soon.”

Grafing: Becker, Birkholz, Doranth, Henkel, Hess, Koch, Krenkel, Küchenhoff, Schnödt, Vogel, Wieser.