Game Week Update: CU Ball Busters

4th February 2024 – Game Week Update, CU vs. Mississippi Choctaws

The last pre-midseason match at Clinton, Mississippi, played out on Sunday February 4th on the home court of the Mississippi Choctaws. The Columtreal team having held steady in the driving seat so far in the season now occupy the shared first spot of the league and gathered quite a following of their local fans at the match.

Columtreal is not too far away from Clinton city so with extra away support and a sold out arena full of the fans from both teams, the drums and noise built and thus the game was on.

Go Looters!

Much to the audience’s dismay, the first two sets of the game started with a completely lacklustre effort as both teams seemed to be conserving energy. Services changed at a steady pace and both sides of the tribunes seemed to be uncomfortable with the price of the tickets for this elementary school performance on display. By the time the first two sets were over, at 25-22 for Ballbusters and 25-23 for Chocktaws, the fans seemed on the edge of leaving.

The third set however brought a distinct change of pace. When the Columtreal machine started producing at high level of efficiency, and the Mississippi squad fielded their best to counter, each of the two squads were having difficulty penetrating the blocks of the opposing team and when they did, the liberos were always in place to keep the game going. In an emotional swing, the arena was at the boiling point by the end of the third set ending in Columtreal advantage of 29-27.

The war drums sounded from the home team bleachers and the Chocktaws were far from done. Finally finding an opening in the Columtreal defence they were out to collect scalps, or rather, picked holes and exploited miscommunications in the Ballbuster line up, which no amount of line shuffling seemed to be fixing. The arena exploded as the Chocktaws delivered a severe punishment for any mistake, with the score reaching 25-19, pushing the game into a tie at 2-2. The game was headed into the last deciding set.

Ding Ding – Volleyball or Fight Night?

The fifth set took the boiling point of the arena over the top, threatening a near explosion, when within the space of 12 rallies the Columtreal Ballbusters were nearly named the ‘Headbusters‘, after the team Captain Maya Flores landed a headshot* on Choctaws libero Aneta James. Immediately thereafter, Rachel Wesson landed further consecutive headshots on Choctaws middle Jennifer Lawrence and hitter Mariah Westfield; the last of which won the set 15-9 for the Ballbusters. This brought the home audience up from their seats as a rain of insults came down onto the Columtreal squad and mostly on the Flores – Wesson duo, where hot tempered Rachel “Rage” Wesson was heard replying to the fans with “Mississippi Choctaws?  More like Miss hippies Mock flaws…  Come on down, we can see if you are any tougher than Morgan City’s fans… come on bring it!” apparently commemorating her infamous disqualification from the Summer Kiss My Ace tournament where Wesson participated in a brawl with both the opposing team and their fans until she was removed from the court by the Morgan City Police. As Captain Flores and Columtreal hitter Jenny Gates stepped in to calm Wesson down, one of the fans dubbed the upset player “Spider sack spooky cunt” and recommended to her to “stop playing with balls and get some actual anger issues by getting cock therapy in your life”, Gates – a new player for the Ballbusters this season and originally from Australia – quickly turned from the calming presence into Wesson supporter, with a loving and not quite as calming recommendation of “Get the fuck out of here you half-sucked mango” for the Mississippi fan.

With the tense situation threatening to escalate and possibly see the Columtreal team disqualified from the season, the atmosphere only calmed down with a great effort of the rest of both teams over the following couple of minutes. Luckily, there was no violence, thus marking an inglorious fifth victory for the Columtreal squad with a close 3:2 score, and keeping them firmly in the shared first spot of the league.

*note: Headshots in volleyball are typically accidents in spike defence, though there is an array of legal attacks aiming at the opposing player commonly used in the game. Even the ball played by a headshot in defence can be recovered, as the ball can be kept in the air by any possible body part legally.

(Rachel is kinda spooky sometimes, but she can bite more than she can chew in fights sometimes – Ed)

Set Results by Numbers

Set 1: 25-22

Set 2: 23-25

Set 3: 29-27

Set 4: 19-25

Set 5: 15-9

Conference Standings After Week 6