Chapter 13 Practice Upgrade
After all the procedures were completed, the summer camp officially began with a command from the veteran coach.
Forty people sounds like a lot at first glance, but after forming teams and playing some matches, you can get to know most of them. In less than a week of training, Sawada Tsunayoshi had gotten to know quite a few people. Although he himself didn't realize it, most of them were happy to team up with him.
"Tsuna, what position are you playing today?" Matsukawasaki jumped out from behind and glanced at Tsuna's hand.
Sawada Tsunayoshi unfolded the note, which clearly stated "Second Serving".
Matsukawa Saki breathed a sigh of relief and immediately said,
"I'm playing as a free agent today, can we team up?" He clasped his hands together, his eyes filled with prayer.
Tsuna nodded indifferently. He didn't have many requirements for his teammates; he just wanted to play together.
Then he discovered that Hyuga was also playing as a free agent today. Tsuna shook his head with great sympathy, indicating that he had already formed a team and there was nothing he could do now.
It is often said that the libero is the "big daddy" because the libero is responsible for receiving the ball spiked by the opponent and passing it to the setter, so as to coordinate with the setter to implement tactics.
Such a person who carries the hopes of the entire team is truly a treasure!
But it's obvious that Hinata isn't, and Matsukawa Saki is only half.
If a good first pass and second pass are like a sweet, affectionate couple, then Hinata, with her weak reception skills and responsibility for the first pass, becomes a liability, making the setter and the entire team seem like innocent friends who have been caught up in a lovers' war.
The coaching staff wanted to make everyone realize the importance of each position, so they randomly assigned roles.
Tsunayoshi is alright. He often takes on multiple roles in the Namimori club, such as catching, spiking, and most of all, passing. Even though he isn't particularly good at any of them, he's still good enough for the elementary school field.
Although Matsukawa Saki is a free agent, he is not very bold and lacks initiative when receiving the ball. When he first teamed up with other players, he was criticized by them.
Moreover, even if they are both setters, different personalities can lead to different tactics. Matsukawa Saki was not targeting Tsunayoshi for tactical reasons, but because among all the setters present, none of them had a better personality than Sawada Tsunayoshi.
When Sawada Tsunayoshi encounters a poor first pass, he will adjust himself to become a suitable setter. Not only will he not put pressure on the first passer, but he will also receive encouragement and praise in most cases.
She's an angel!
Kujoike listened to the whole thing and then joined in.
“Actually, I think we can play with two setters.” He was also holding a piece of paper with “setter” written on it.
It's ridiculous to make an attacker play setter!
Hinata and Kujo were unlucky; they didn't get the attacker position on any of the four days they played, and had to play other positions with tears in their eyes.
Sawada Tsunayoshi sighed, "But the number of setters is fixed. If we play with two setters, some teams will be without a setter."
This is probably also the coaching staff's sinister intention, to prevent any trainees from taking advantage of the situation.
"Was this training program not included in previous years?"
Sawada Tsunayoshi watched as Kujo Ike also left with difficulty, to find the person he had been harassing that day.
Matsukawa breathed a sigh of relief as he watched Kujo leave; he certainly didn't want to work with someone with a fiery temper.
"There wasn't one last year. The coaches were just incompetent. They might as well have me practice diving instead of this kind of sport."
Sawada Tsunayoshi calmed the libero's mindset and looked up to find his partner for the day. The next moment, a group of people who had seemed not to be paying attention to this side of the field unexpectedly passed by.
Matsukawa couldn't help but chuckle. He glanced at the others, understanding dawning on him.
"Today, Akaashi and several other setters didn't draw their positions. Hmm, let me see, Akaashi should be the opposite hitter today. Let's go find Akaashi."
Sawada Tsunayoshi nodded good-naturedly; in fact, he also liked to compete with people he was familiar with.
"Akaashi, wanna team up?" Matsukawa called out from about ten meters away.
Akaashi turned around, with Hyuga and Kujo hanging from his arms respectively, as if Akaashi would make a dramatic scene of shedding tears on the volleyball court if he dared to refuse these two, because Akaashi Kyoji couldn't bear the shame of that.
Sawada Tsunayoshi felt he couldn't bear the shame, so he and Matsukawa paused, then immediately turned and walked away.
Finally, they simply teamed up with a few students who were practically rushing over to volunteer. Seeing the regretful looks on the other people's faces, Tsuna felt a little embarrassed; he wasn't good at refusing people.
There's not much to say about the match. Since the players weren't on the same team to begin with, it was unlikely they'd coordinate well from the start, let alone play in positions they weren't even in. Every team played a chaotic mess, devoid of any aesthetic appeal.
Before the start, Tsuna specifically reminded Matsukawa to remember to receive the ball, and then told his teammate, a libero who had drawn the attacking position, to remember to spike the ball.
This is based on experience gained from the competition a few days ago.
Although they verbally agreed, things were a different story when it came to the actual competition.
Matsukawa Saki glanced at the opposite hitter and saw him about to catch the ball. He put down his foot and stood still. The opposite hitter caught the ball just as he had expected and passed it to Sawada Tsunayoshi.
Sawada Tsunayoshi lifted the ball, giving the attacker, who wasn't yet used to the position, a long pass to give him time to react. It just so happened to be the attacker Tsunayoshi had specifically instructed; the opponent looked incredibly excited and slammed the ball down with a powerful spike.
"Awesome!" The person jumped up and cheered after scoring.
So he's a free spirit with his own ideas. Sawada Tsunayoshi looked away, then thought of Matsukawa Saki, and ran his fingers through his hair in exasperation.
"How was today?" Kujou Hayate asked Suzuki, who was standing next to the stadium watching the game, as he came out of the meeting room with a stack of A4 papers tucked under his elbow.
Suzuki was scribbling in his notebook, not giving Kujou any attention. He sighed with a hint of melancholy.
"What else can you do? You expect these kids to master the other positions in three days?"
Putting down his pen, Suzuki looked around the room, stopped joking, and answered more seriously.
"Overall, things have improved a bit. At least these cautious guys have finally realized that they can't become fat overnight, and they've started to discuss and coordinate with their teammates."
Coach Kujo nodded. "Knowing that you need to cooperate is already quite good."
He followed Suzuki's gaze to one of the teams, then looked away as if his eyes had been burned by something spicy.
"Your Hyuga's catching is still, well, as bad as ever."
On the court, Hyuga received the ball in a strange posture, and it flew crookedly towards Akaashi. Wait, Akaashi isn't playing setter, is he?
"Shoyo! Where's the ball!" Kujo Ike roared, his voice carrying across half the court to the two coaches.
Hinata scratched his head sheepishly, "Sorry, Ikeya, I'll definitely hit the ball!" He apologized loudly as well.
Kyoji Akaashi, who had been stuck in the middle playing the opposite hitter position and had no chance to receive the ball, received this incredibly bad first pass and set it up for the attacker.
Kujou Hayate remained silent for a long while before slowly speaking.
"That last shot didn't look like it was caught."
Suzuki closed his eyes in grief. Indeed, the ball seemed to have hit Hyuga and bounced off.
"However, Sawada is still very stable."
The coaching staff leading the men's team all admitted that Sawada Tsunayoshi had the best teamwork, not because he could play any position, since everyone knows how to play volleyball and knows a little about other positions.
However, this "knowing a little" is limited to the ideas in one's own mind, and whether it can be consistent with other people's thought processes is another matter.
One reason is that Hinata's technique is simply bad, and another is that their thinking doesn't match.
Matsukawa Saki hesitated for a moment, and the ball he received, somewhat awkwardly, did not fly to the setter's current position as he had expected. He cried out in his heart, "I received the ball badly! Ahhh!"
"Didn't Matsukawa always play as a flex player? How come he's playing his own position like a complete stranger?" Coach Kujo frowned.
The female coach who brought Matsukawa shook her head upon hearing this. "Matsukawa's technique is actually quite good, but he always seems hesitant when receiving the ball. It's probably because he bumped into someone while receiving the ball before, which made him a bit apprehensive."
"Isn't his positioning clear? He's a libero, so he should be the one receiving the ball," Suzuki replied.
"After all, they've only just started playing. It's not uncommon for them to bump into each other when their eyes are on the ball. I've talked to him about it several times, and he probably just feels bad about it himself." The female coach was also quite troubled by her student's stubbornness.
The ball flew to a rather clever spot. Tsuna had a premonition that the ball would fly to this spot. He half-squatted down, and along with Matsukawa Saki's pounding heart, the ball flew safely back onto the field.
Since the ball successfully cleared the net, the others didn't say much and gathered together to cheer for the score. They didn't care how the ball was received, as long as it scored.
Everyone's thinking is simple and straightforward. Matsukawa Saki hesitated, thinking, "I guess I'm not really suited to be a free agent."
Sawada Tsunayoshi was drinking water when he heard the other person belittling himself and shaking his head repeatedly, his hair flying in the air with the movement.
"Absolutely not!" He put down his water glass. "It's already amazing that Matsukawa-senpai was able to catch the ball!"
"The ball flew that fast! Matsukawa-senpai must have been distracted just now." Sawada Tsunayoshi was always very perceptive. "Even if he was distracted, he was still able to catch that ball. Matsukawa-senpai is really amazing!"
Because he had tried every position, the words sounded more convincing coming from Tsunayoshi's mouth, and Matsukawa suddenly felt that he was also quite amazing.
He then strode confidently and proudly onto the field.
"Has Sawada not decided which position he wants to play yet?" the female coach asked upon seeing this.
Suzuki shook his head. "He doesn't have any particular inclination. He just does whatever you tell him to practice during training. Before, because Hinata liked to spike, he played more as a setter. Lately, we've been focusing on getting the ball back in the receiving position, and he's doing pretty well at that."
"His reaction speed is always very fast, and his direction is very accurate. Does he have his own thinking?" The female coach speculated that the opponent might observe the ball's path by observing his teammates' movements.
“It shouldn’t be,” Kujou said, pointing to Tsuna’s legs that were moving on their own. “He doesn’t think things through; he just subconsciously felt that the ball would fly that way.”
"It's intuition," the coaches concluded.
A note from the author:
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We're super intuitive, hmph.
When initially deciding to find a beautiful and kind-hearted setter for Tsuna and Hinata, we didn't immediately choose Akaashi, after all, our good friend Tokyo Mew Mew is there, or perhaps she could have a romantic encounter with Inarizaki Fox.
Then one day I went out with a friend and bought some volleyball millet. The shop assistant was Japanese, so we asked him if he had any red millet. The shop assistant was very confused when he heard "red".
Later, after I showed him the picture, he suddenly realized and said, "Akaashi!"
Then I walked away shouting "akaashi!" and afterwards my friend and I kept saying "akaashi" all day.
Yeah, that's pretty much the decision, it'll be akaashi.
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