Tuesday night at the Pomona High School gym in Arvada, the Panthers hosted Mountain Range for a Varsity Volleyball match. This was my first volleyball game since last fall shooting the Eagle River High School Lady Wolves teams. The Pomona gym was small compared to Eagle River’s gym, and the lighting was not much better.
I had been having focusing issues with my Canon 7D and had reset the camera taking all the batteries out (camera battery and lithium watch battery for backup settings) and this was my first time out with it since doing this reset. Lighting was a challenge, so I felt this was a great chance to test the focusing out.
Pomona was coming off of a 5 set loss to Evergreen, and this was Mountain Ranges first match of the season. With a small gym, the teams warmed up one at a time on the court. There was no room to do dig warmups on the side while the other team warmed up on the court, and that was really the only difference from the Alaskan high school volleyball I am use to.
In the first game, it was close all the way through until Pomona could put game one away with a score of 25-22, putting the Panthers up 1 game to 0. The second game was Pomona’s too as they went up 2 games to 0 with a 25-18 win.
The third game started with the Panthers leading Mountain Range 2 games to none. The third game would again go to Pomona, 25-22 giving the Panthers a 3-0 match win over the visiting Mustangs. It was a really good match despite only playing 3 games. There were a few times in the games where volleys seemed to go on and on. There had to be at least one volley that crossed the net about 8 times with some nice sets, spikes, blocks, and saves. For being Mountain Ranges first game, they played well, and both teams seemed to be well matched against each other.
Mountain Range will next face Prairie View tonight, September 6th, at Prairie View High School, and Pomona will host Boulder High School tonight.
As for my 7D focusing, it seemed to be better than normal, but not perfect. I will have a better test of it Wednesday night at the Colorado Rapids game against the Portland Timbers at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.
To view and purchase photos from the game between the Mustangs and the Panthers, please visit
