Vips Bardot HS3 – Harambee HS3 20/09/2025

This Saturday Gents Three was sent on it’s next mission, which took place in our own backyard! And just like our first mission, we once again faced old rivals. Or rather, old allies-turned-rivals. Back in the old days... Anyway. The matchday started with lunch at the stands to cheer on the other teams that were already playing their games. We were happy to have coach Chiel back from spending two weeks at Defensie. Among other things, Chiel expanded his knowledge of torture methods of different forms strength and agility training during his time at Defensie. With the team almost back to full strength, we put the music on standje burenruzie and entered our favourite wooden sauna to warm-up for the match.

For the first set we decided to give ourselves an extra challenge. Let’s not just try to beat the Vips, let’s try to do so while we’re going for a studenten-tien when it comes to blocking and attacking! Tl’dr: It didn’t really work out well. Despite the time-outs in the first set, it was the second set when we decided to listen to the advice. It turned out to be quite helpful, since we were suddenly able to score way more points directly! The first set win of the season! We sadly couldn’t push through in the third set, which we lost. Up until that point, we’d managed as a team to largely avoid serving on libero Pim, knowing well that he is a strong passer. Which is why Gerben figured this was the best moment to challenge his former team mate a bit. A combination of service pressure and good block and defence led to an 8-0 lead, a decent start of the set. From that moment on, Vips managed to fight their way back, but not fast enough to win the set. 2-2! Alles-uit-de-contributie! ... or so we hoped. Once again, we failed to push through in the final one and made too many mistakes.

After the game, Ruud cleverly tried to save us doing laundry, and took the shirts bag of Gents 1 to the locker room. The plan fell through, apparently they didn’t want to play in our shirts and preferred their own clean ones. So much for trying to be environmentally responsible. Nonetheless, after showering we happily cheered them on while they also lost to the Vips. Looks like both teams have work to do before they meet their opponents in the regular competition again. Two weeks to prepare for our next encounter in the regular competition!