I just got knocked on my @ss by a girl
 

LJ1 at women's college match tonight. Pass shanked high and directly over my head. Three players try to chase it down, leaving me nowhere to move.

Boom! Two of us go down in a heap. So embarrassing. The girls thought it was hysterical.

I think you should tell the story as, "Yeah -- I've still got it! In fact, I got hit on by a college girl last night."

Was this match streamed on the internet? If so I'd like to see the play and maybe give advice as to how you should handle this next time. Generally though you have three options- straight back along your sideline, moving along the endline till you are out of the way, or out towards the bench. Most of the time straight back seems to work for me.

Believe me, we talked about this in the post-game. :D Straight back would not have helped as that's exactly where the ball was going, and I wasn't going to outrun the girls who had a running start.

Along the endline wouldn't have helped, because the libero was running almost exactly along that line. And moving down the sideline toward the stand would've put me in the path of another player.

My first instinct is what actually doomed me. The ball was so high was going to land well behind me, so I thought, "I don't want to move into the space where someone will play the ball." I thought if I stayed put, I would not interfere with the actual play on the ball. Unfortunately, I hadn't calculated the paths that the 3 players would take to get to the ball. And when I realized I was in the way of one of them, I couldn't move fast enough to avoid the contact.

The only thing, in retrospect, that would have worked is if I had moved at a 45-degree angle away from the endline toward the sideline bleachers. That would've taken me away from the spot where the ball would be contacted and would have moved me out of the path of all 3 players.

I once had to take a few steps INTO the court to avoid players -- not what I wanted, but it also seemed like the "only" option at the time

Scrapper, were you L1 or L2 in this scenario? What feedback did you get from your R1?

I think I said it in the original post, but I was LJ1.

See my previous post.