In the Women’s division both of our teams Opens and U19s were beaten in their Bronze medal matches to get 4ths. A great result for our A team which played the tournament basically with just 6 players, and an excellent result for the U19s with there first outing in a competition. In fact this was the debut performance of Women’s U19s for TVA!

Congratulations to all the TVA players !!! Next stop is possibly TVA’s tournament “Clash of the Titans” hopefully to be played in conjunction with our Youth Challenge Tournament in July.

Titan’s Women U19

Elisha Bird
Bridgid Brosnan
Micky Gesina
Alexia Hindmarsh
Sarah Inocentes
Sarah Kelly
Jess Knight
Tess Knight
Jess Langton

Titans Women A

Lisa Croft
Jess Head
Steph Ivessa
Yas Kaddatz
Kate Russell (c)
Kate Stewart

Coach – Mark Norman
Manager – Kate Russell

Congrats to all the girls, especially the U19s with their first challenge as Titans!

Titans Men

The Men’s team is drawn from the Titans A and Reserve teams currently playing in the PVL comp. Go Team !!

Matty Atkinson
Chris Hollman
Daniel Jones
Terry Moore (c)
Grant Norman
Matthew Norman
Jaek Passier
Jeff Russell
Andrew Woods

The Titans will continue to get Queensland to notice the quality of volleyball originating in Toowoomba !!

This will be a great way to knock the rust out of the system before the TVA Invitation Tournament (mixed) which will be held around the end of Feb ……. Pre season…

See you there
Mark Norman

Well, we’ve all had enough of a break to recharge and get ready for the new season…!! This year will be fuller than most of the previous years with more happening. Trainings for the Titans squads (including junior Titans (U17 & U19)) will begin shortly. Local League musters will be around the end of Feb / beginning of March.

This year a few schools go over to play in NZ (St Ursula’s and Harristown SHS) at different times … good luck to them – it should be a wonderful experience for all involved. There will also be a number of tournaments for the local players to participate in, in the SEQld area. TVA will host one of the early ones being a mixed team tournament near the time of musters.. Great fun and a good level of comp..

Titans Squads will have a few objectives in their sights this year with U17 &/ U19 teams being selected to play in the QVA’s PVL (if the format suits) and in other tournaments through the year…Both senior teams also have “unfinished business” and aim to take it to the Brisbane teams this time round.. So competition for team selection will be tough and trainings begin shortly.

End of season results for last year will also be posted soon…

Have a fantastic season !!!
MN

Well what a turn-up for the records ! Titans Women won Bronze in the Women’s A Grade, wrenching the prize from Brisbanes grasp in the dying moments and the Reserve men won bronze in the Men’s Reserve Grade ! Well done to all the players and coaches – an excellent result in both divisions.

Titans Women ~ Season Round-up

The team was showing significant signs of maturing into a real team over the last half of the PVL season. The first sniff of possibilities came in Round 9 when the girls, having lost their first 6 matches outright and reduced to a bare 6 players (injury and work commitments) chased Norths to lose 2-3, 13-15 in the 5th. (This is remembering that Norths had smashed the Titans 3-0 in Round 4.) Then the first breakthrough came in Round 13 when Toowoomba smashed a Brisbane team leached of its top players by AVL commitments, 3-0; the belief was building.  The following weekend, Round 14, Titans smashed Norths 3-0 albeit in less than quality play.  Our team then was knocked back to earth in Round 15, when Easts humiliated the Titans with an emphatic 0-3 (8-25, 13-25, 18-25). (Probably nothing to do with a Titans squad party the night before..!!).

This left Titans in 4th position at the end of the season’s Round Robin by a set count-back pushing Norths out to 5th. The first of the Finals series preliminaries saw a repeat match against Easts, but our girls had a fire in their eye taking a set from Easts and pushing them in the last two. This was the first appearance of a united, more focused team operating close to the game plan. Pumped up by this performance, the girls went on to defeat Norths in the bronze semi’s 3-1, and the wave of belief was building a tide. They wanted bronze! … and, with their commitment to play at this level being much higher than any other team in the division, deserved it.

It should also be mentioned that the squad has suffered some casualties along this journey through injury, other commitments and just plain drop-out (…. its a tough road). Those that fell due to injury include Lisa Croft (Round 2, knee reconstruction required [touch football !!!]), Gillian Fulton (Round 12 , knee dislocation during match) and Angela Head (Round 13, broken wrist, training).

Women’s A Grade Bronze match ~

The Bronze medal match became the focus and the girls could taste it. Early observations of Brisbane’s performance in the preliminary match showed they were off the pace missing some big guns (injury) and getting smashed by Easts who had struggled against us. However, on the night it looked like they had a few of those guns back so the girls had to be prepared for a struggle.

The spirit was high and the team was unified like never before …. They started with a bang shocking Brisbane by taking the first set 25-21. Brisbane rallied and smashed back 17-25 with some long, hard rallies tiring the Titans players at times. The girls refocused and came back to get the third 25-18. Miho Miyazaki starred in defence in her role as libero recovering balls that were all but thought lost – fantastic. (We will miss her as she returns to Japan next year, especially her unparalleled humility.) The fourth set jumping out to a 4-1 points lead was soon crushed by a Brisbane reply with the Titans showing signs of fatigue and associated anxiety with some soft errors creeping into their play eventually going down 18-25.

So at 2-2 it was set for the 5th set showdown. The girls got into a huddle and talked about how much they wanted this, how much they felt deserving, and how close they were as a team. They came out charged with new vigour, a fire, and leapt to a 8-3 lead at changeover, mostly due to heavy directed serving backed up with solid reply play. They continued to a 13-7 lead and hope was slipping into “done”. But then Brisbane piled on the pressure and silly errors became magnified, and brisbane got on a run to bring the scores closer to 13-12 before a break. Stress and doubt were starting to show, but to the players credit, in their growing maturity in this team, they did not start sniping, they just hung on to what they had spoken about earlier – sisters-in-arms – and clawed the game to a 15-13 win on belief alone!!! The team erupted, the whole 5 court venue knew that the Toowoomba Titans Women had arrived !!!

Incredible….

Whilst the Titans A men slumped to an uncharacteristic loss to Easts (0-3), knocking them out of medal contention, the Reserve men had a great win over UQ grinding out two very tight sets for a 3-0 win (25-21, 27-25, 26-24).  This also puts them in the bronze medal match against Dragons (a tough assignment)!  Well done boys !!!

Supporters are encouraged to travel down to Brisbane (Boondall, BEC) to cheer our stars on for their Bronze matches…  Reserve men 8.20pm, A women 9.40pm.  See you there…!!!!

Titan’s Reserve men smashed their opposition Redlands 3-1 (25-18, 22-25, 25-2, 25-23). Dave Robertson and Grant Norman featured well with Brent Dixon doing damage with his big jump serve. The Titan’s A men, missing a couple of their guns, had an uncharacteristicly uninspired game going down to Norths 0-3 having destroyed them on two occasions previously in the season. Shining lights for Titans were Jeff Russell and Matthew Norman in both back court and net action.

This week’s matches (quarter-finals) will determine whether all the Titans’ teams can make the bronze medal matches in their respective divisions. All the teams have a big chance to achieve this and are pumped and ready to go !! …