"Load control" is the order of the day at VC Wiesbaden.

The "duty of care" must be guaranteed, emphasized volleyball coach Benedikt Frank and managing director Christopher Fetting in the same word.

Because the health of the players is the most important thing after their Bundesliga team had to remain almost completely in quarantine last week.

Nine out of eleven players were infected with the corona virus.

Game operations in Wiesbaden were suspended for weeks.

Now they can go back to the ball, everyone has checked through.

It can go on, but please not so intensely.

But in competitive sports, heart rate control collides with the will to win.

Achim Dreis

sports editor.

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How should a player gently control her stress when a smash flies towards her in the fifth set in the hard-fought home game against the German record champions SSC Palmberg Schwerin and threatens to mark a point for the opponent.

"It's not possible in a competition," admits coach Frank: "It's about winning." And the battered Wiesbaden volleyball women almost succeeded on Tuesday evening.

In an extremely intense game, which did not at all correspond to the character of a build-up event, the VCW lost in 2:3 sets (25:19, 18:25, 25:20, 22:25, 10:15) against the favorites .

It was already after 10:30 in the evening when the outstanding outside attacker Lina Alsmeier converted Schwerin's first match point.

It was the 24th point of attack for the 21-year-old,

The game lasted two hours and ten minutes of pure playing time, which was broadcast live on Sport1 on television and could easily pass as nationwide advertising for the sport of volleyball.

Not always of high technical quality, but combative and exciting until the last long rally, with a high level of commitment from everyone involved.

Support in the hall came from the tireless drummers on both sides.

Five locals formed the "blue wall" in block C1, five guests in yellow held up against it in block A3.

It was touching when the twelve Schwerin players thanked their ten supporters after the game, who had made the long journey from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's state capital to Wiesbaden, over a good 600 kilometers, for a Tuesday evening game.

Only 413 spectators found their way

The ten people from Schwerin attracted attention in the 2,100-seat Wiesbaden hall on the German Unity Square.

According to the current Corona rules, 630 people should have come.

413 were finally there.

"We have to attract people again first," said Fetting, slightly saddened by the lack of interest.

He suspects that rebuilding the club-fan bond will still be a tough task.

The game plan doesn't make it any easier either: After a break of more than four weeks, the home games are now tightly timed in the calendar.

On Ash Wednesday (7.30 p.m.) we face Potsdam at home, two days later against Straubing.

Six games still have to be played before the play-offs of the top eight begin on March 26, for which VCW would have qualified as currently seventh.

The club made up a point in the table on Tuesday thanks to the two sets they won.

And up to the intermediate score of 21:19 in the fourth round, it looked as if the outsider could even keep three points for a win.

Then the only 19-year-old VCW player Kveta Grabovská made a few unfortunate decisions in the heat of the close game, the momentum tilted in favor of the women from Schwerin and the set was lost with 22:25 points.

Which also reached the limit of the challenge.

The tie break exceeded the resistance resources of the women from Wiesbaden, even if diagonal player Lena Große Scharmann, who scored 19 points, fought the defeat with no matter how hard she tried.

"I think we did well," said the longest-serving VCW player Tanja Großer after the match.

"Little things" would have made the difference in the fourth set.

But considering that they all had to complete “return-to-sport tests” together last week, it was quite good.

Stress ECG, heart examination, lung check with exhalation test and blood count were the most recent training contents in order to be able to attack again.

An intensive match with two and a half hours playing time was not necessarily planned.

"Now it takes two to three hours to get down," explained Großer.

And meant the adrenaline reduction.

The danger of Long-Covid in female athletes was no more than a theoretical thought at that moment.