The fear of Heungkuk Life… When Kim Yeon-kyung is blocked, Yelena and Kim Mi-yeon burst
No matter what anyone says, the center of Heungkuk Life Insurance, a women’s professional volleyball team, is Kim Yeon-kyung (35), the ‘Volleyball Empress’. Inside the game, he is an offensive and defensive player who is good at both attacking and defending, and outside of the game, he is an irreplaceable player who enhances the team atmosphere with his unique fighting spirit and ceremony. Of course, due to Kim Yeon-kyung’s enthusiastic fandom, the away teams playing at Samsan World Gymnasium in Incheon need to have the mentality to overcome the shouts of more than 5,000 people.
So, in the first leg of the 2022-2023 V-League Women’s Champions Championship held on the 29th, the road construction manager Kim Jong-min’s solution to Heungkuk Life Insurance was ‘tie Kim Yeon-kyung’. The fact that he can’t do his part in the attack is because it has more than just one player’s sluggish performance. In order to block Kim Yeon-kyung, coach Kim positioned Catbell, who is the tallest in the team at 188cm, as an apologetic spiker. This is because if Kim Yeon-kyung and her rotation match, even if she is Kim Yeon-kyung of the world, she cannot help but be aware of the catbell’s blocking height.
Director Kim’s ‘Kim Yeon-kyung blockade’ clearly worked in the 1st and 2nd sets. It may be because Heungkuk Life Insurance players did not improve their performance because they had no practical experience for about 10 days after the last regular league match against Hyundai E&C on the 19th, but Kim Yeon-kyung scored 5 points, including 1 block and 1 sub score in the first set. , the attack success rate dropped to 25%. In the second set, she scored only 2 points, and her attack success rate dropped further to 20%. In the first and second sets, Kim Yeon-kyung scored 7 points and the attack success rate was only 23.53%, which means that the road construction players did not easily give Kim Yeon-kyung a goal.
The problem is that the deterioration of the players’ condition was greater than the degree of deterioration of Heungkuk Life’s performance. Before the match, coach Kim said, “Maybe it’s the changing season, so there are some players who are a bit cold. That’s the part I’m worried about,” he said. It can be a common ‘smoke operation’ arranged by the command towers before the game, and if you have a real cold, there are many cases where the game works out rather well because unnecessary power is not put into the body.
However, when I opened the lid, the cold energy seemed to hit the entire road construction team. In the end, even after blocking Kim Yeon-kyung like that, the match on this day was twisted as they gave up all the first and second sets due to their poor condition. Park Jung-ah and Bae Yoo-na, the main players of the team, could not show half of the performance they showed in the last playoff against Hyundai E&C, and even the defensive nucleus Im Myung-ok made double contact mistakes, allowing an ace to the opponent’s easy serve, etc. It was definitely different from the good times.
Moreover, the scary thing about Heungkuk Life Insurance is that even if the team’s ace, Kim Yeon-kyung, is shaken, Yelena and Kim Mi-yeon are players who can explode. Setter Lee Won-jeong, who was absent due to an injury at the end of the regular season, returned in time for the championship match, and when Kim Yeon-kyung faltered in the 1st and 2nd sets, the team attacked Yelena. In the first set, Yelena’s attack share was 37.5%, and in the second set, it rose to 44.1%. Despite the increased possession, Yelena’s offensive power did not waver. With an attack success rate of over 50% in both sets 1 and 2, Yelena led the team’s attack by raising 10 points each in the 1st and 2nd sets, for a total of 20 points.
Captain Kim Mi-yeon also had to receive the baptism of purposed hits from the road construction servers with her whole body. On this day, only 13 times he received 45 serves and connected them correctly over the setter’s head, and 3 of them allowed an ace. The receive efficiency was only 22.22%. There are usually many players who falter in attack when receiving is faltering, but on this day, Kim Mi-yeon did not falter in attack and scored 14 points with a success rate of 36.11%.
While Yelena and Kim Mi-yeon endured the first and second sets, Kim Yeon-kyung regained her attacking rhythm from her third set. Kim Yeon-kyung, who scored 8 points in the 3rd set, scored 11 points in the 4th set where the match was split. In the 4th set, her attack success rate reached a whopping 73.33%. Kim Yeon-kyung, who made up for the sluggishness of the 1st and 2nd sets in the 3rd and 4th sets, scored 26 points on the day, and her attack success rate was 45.1%. That was pretty close to the season average. This proves that great players are not sluggish throughout the game.
On the other hand, during the playoffs, the road construction setter Lee Yoon-jung, who operated the game without being aware of the fact that it was the first ‘spring volleyball’ of her career, was greatly shaken. Of course, it was partly because the strikers were not able to show their offensive power properly as the team was in poor condition, but Lee Yoon-jung’s toss was not properly delivered to the strikers. If the striker handles the badly raised ball well, the setter’s toss rhythm rises, and if the setter raises the ball well to a player in poor condition, the attack rhythm can rise. It was just a vicious cycle.메이저사이트
After the game, coach Kim also acknowledged this. He said, “In general, Heungkuk Life Insurance was not in a normal condition or game rhythm in my opinion, but we lost because we couldn’t play what we could. There were many invisible mistakes, and the breathing between the striker and the setter was not good. (Lee) Yoon Jeong-i said, “There is a difference in the weight between the playoffs and the championship game, and I think he was overwhelmed with overcoming it.”
As for the road construction, it is necessary to prepare for the second game at the edge of the cliff. Of the 16 women’s championships held in history, the winning team in the first leg won the final championship 9 times, with a probability of 56.25%. However, in the recent championships held 10 times from the 2010-2011 season, the winning team in the first leg lifted the championship trophy nine times. This is because Heungkuk Life Insurance took a 90% chance. If they gave up until the second game, they were driven to a situation where they could give up the championship with a shutout.
Coach Kim also said, “I’m trying to prepare for the second game with the mindset that I’m going to camp with multiples. First of all, (Lee) Yoon-jung has to take care of her mentality as much as possible. If the players return to their normal physical condition, the second game will be better than today.”