I learned something today?
New rules implemented. What was the "net" (pun intended) result?
Not sure what. The net was lowered. I was told 2-3" but there are no stats on that. It was lower. This makes it flimsy, and it will have to be re-engineered to make it optimal for the New World Order.
We are all in agreement that net touching is bad now, m'kay? While I couldn't keep track of all the violations, I remember having one very stupid one, where I hit the botom of the net. If memory servers, LJ(!) and Master Bruce tied for the most violations, at like 6. The difference being, LJ "knew" he was in the net, and Bruce didn't. While there is a differnce, I'm wondering whether the person who knew, and is the progenitor of these new rules, shouldn't have known better.
Everyone was more or less OK with this plethora of vague and unexplained rule changes.
While I get it somewhat, I'm still a little confused about what anything besides not touching the net is gonna do to improve the game.
We now have a lower net, which favors servers and hitters. We have some new rules I don't entirely understand about fielding, but that Ford and Dub have explained to me in texts. Can you put these on the website please?
I can see how these make defense more professional, but they also make it more limited, and we've made steps to favor offense.
This makes the net result, after 1 day's experiment, that we do indeed look more like Dallas, in that good serves and big hitters tend to dominate. Was that what was intended? Because I'm not sure that's exactly our game...
Sorry to beat you up for your innovative solutions for better play, but, in exchange for these rule changes, I was promised a massive influx of highly skilled sand players. How many did we get? LJ? Beuller?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4zyjLyBp64
I was also told in the post game show from the Dallas road trip that we have to improve our first pass off the serve. Now riddle me this--if we struggled with a good first pass on a low net where people can serve downhill and you are facing tall opponents in a short court, how will our first pass be improved if you lower our net and let servers go more downhill in a long court? Especially when there are new rules about "lifting" that still need to be clearly defined (again, I refer to Edub/Ford texts that need to be posted) because I am still a little confused.
If anything, our first passes were worse, not better, in favor of the improved offense. Is that what was supposed to happen? Or are we saying "give it time," and the rule limited defense will improve, survive and adapt against a rule enhanced offense?
I will tell you this. In one day, on a low net, I tied my number of blocks for the entire season--3 against Mikey, if memory serves. Short serves are harder to do if people are off the net. LJ massively improved his hitting % from the back row.
Will these rules make us more "professional"? The no net touch will.
The rest of it? Very hard to tell...