Goooooooood morning everybody!

I’m 90% sure my buddy is faking an injury to get out of playing the Mississauga tournament with me in May. Adam, if you’re reading this, although my serve receive numbers are unbelievably low, the morale I bring to a partnership cannot be understated.

Anyways, here’s today’s agenda:

• ETS Bologna

• Chattanooga

• Cut Serve

• Quick Hits

Let’s get into it 🔥 

✂️ Cut Down your Opponents w/ the Cut Serve

Our most requested skill breakdown so far (mostly by me as I have a date on Friday and I need something to impress her with #rizz). A lackluster cut serve that she could receive with ease might just do the trick.

Shout out to our guy Scott Beeks for getting to 1000 subscribers on YouTube! Check him out!

If you don’t know, a cut serve is when you put spin the ball so it changes direction upon contact with the net.

We want to ensure that we get good JUMP and good LANE on our cut serve. Jump refers to the spin you put on the ball and the movement that proceeds. Lane refers to the directional path of the ball. The better the jump and lane you can get on the ball, the more range your serve will have.

Let’s break down the cut serve into three stages:

1. The Toss: You can perform a cut serve with any toss you choose (vertical, lateral, phantom), but the more consistent your toss, the more effective your serve will be when learning how to cut. Therefore, we suggest starting out with the vertical toss and building up from there.

2. The Spin: We are looking to create a corkscrew/counter-clockwise spin. The more spin, the bigger the jump. Hitting the ball with pure side spin wont change the direction all that much, you need to make as many corkscrew spins as possible to make the jump effective. Effectively it’s a mix between top and sidespin.

3. Hand Contact: When hitting a cut serve you contact the ball twice on the hand. The initial contact is in the upper palm area, and the exit contact is the tip of the fingers to manipulate the spin on the ball.

Let’s note that there is not one correct way to hit a cut serve. Different people like creating spin with various fingers. However, everyone’s initial contact is in the middle of the hand—the “goldilocks” zone. 

So step one, get around the ball on initial contact with your fingers. Second step, get over with your hand (palm and fingers facing down) to create the corkscrew. 

Follow these steps, find what fingers you like using to create that spin, and the repeat over and over and over and over.

Video breakdown here: 

🍻 Tandem Tournaments

ETS Bologna

First off, this event possibly has created the best content of any event in recent memory. The vibes seemed to just be immaculate. Let’s get into the results. 

Levi from VIBIN’ and Nelson from RCG Powerline take home the Pro Division. Is Levi going to win every tournament this year? Probably. I love when players and teams get hot like this in roundnet because they haven’t player Eisenträger/Siemer or any of the big North American teams yet, and that builds this hype around when they finally meet in the big tournaments. 

Krehle and Christiani came 2nd, an impressive result from two players we didn’t see much of on the ETS circuit last year. Christiani had a great tournament in Barcelona as well, finishing 4th, and he kept the momentum up in Bologna. Interesting players to keep an eye on going forward. 

Rainbow Warriors round out the podium in a solid start to their season. 

In Women’s Pro, Chitty Bang wins and takes down Tiramisu, who won their second silver medal in two ETS tournaments this season. This is the second time these two teams have met in the bracket stage this year. Tiramisu won the first matchup (ETS Barcelona) in convincing fashion. 

Oh yeah and in the Mixed Division? Laura and Siemer won the tournament without dropping a set… who saw that coming? Laura stays undefeated on the season.

Southeast Regionals

Bologna wasn’t the only place we saw some great roundnet being played, as the Southeast Regional took place this past weekend in Chattanooga. We had some of the highest ranked players in the sport taking part this weekend, including Katie Pierson, Sarah Allen, Max Model, Gabe Finocchi, Will Picone, Justin Barr, and last year’s Championship winners—Grant Klapwijk and Matthew Cole of Kingdom Come. Some high quality players to say the least…

Starting on the Men’s side, Dawson Morgan and Caleb Cummings of VRGA went a perfect 10-0 to take home the Pitcher. VRGA wasn’t perfect, dropping a set in both their Semifinal and Final, but they showed great consistency winning 54.8% of points played on their way to the top of the podium.

Numb, comprised of Paq Clifford and Kieran Rose, didn’t drop a set throughout the entirety of the bracket stage until the Final—a very strong showing for them. Kingdom Come rounded out the podium finishing in 3rd place. Probably a little disappointed they didn’t make the Final, but played very solid, winning 56% of their points.

Katheleen Phan and Katie Pierson of KP2 (I know I’m missing the ^ between the P and the 2 okay, our email platform had an aneurysm trying to format the name right) dominated the Women’s division, going a perfect 6-0, didn’t drop a set, and won an unreal 62.2% of their points. Almost a Jazz Band (Sarah Allen and Shachi Patel) took home the silver medal, and 1.5 Asians (Malia Wanderer and Stef Ding) were your bronze medal winners.

We had a great three-set battle between Chalked (Kieran Rose and Katie Pierson) and Bastos/Fowler in the Mixed Final, but in the end, Chalked was victorious. 21-19, 17-21, 21-18. Love seeing such competitve roundnet when it matters most.

Overall, it was an outstanding weekend of roundnet in Chattanooga, and I don’t know about you, but I’m really starting to get fired up for Worlds.

You can see all the Southeast Regionals results in the post from USA Roundnet below.

👊 Quick Hits

🎙️ Can we replace Joe Rogan and Jon Anik with the boys on the mic at Bologna?

💰️ Arguably the best team in Roundnet is looking for sponsors

😲 Brookline and Spikeball drama recap with Ben Dantowitz