Team Sweet Valley: Win One for Sandra
Okay, so I was working on the wiki (Join it! It's fun!) and linking to recaps. I decided to start with Team Sweet Valley because, well, that's the easiest. Only two books! But then I noticed something horrifying. LiveJournal apparently ate my recap of Team Sweet Valley #2: Win One for Sandra. Well!
I think this is a giant conspiracy. I mean, I keep talking about trying to get ALL the books recapped and I was so excited when we "completed" series. Now LJ is taking my accomplishments away from me. I will not stand for it. If you find any broken links in the profile please let me know ASAP. I'm not going down without a fight! They will have to pry my recaps from my cold dead hands! ... or something.
Luckily, I write my recaps in MS Word and then copy paste them so I still have this one on my computer. SUCK IT, LIVEJOURNAL. I'm going to repost it now. Old members of the community will have read it already, but hey we've had a lot of new people since then so maybe you'd like to read it!
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Team Sweet Valley #2: Win One for Sandra
Rejoice and be glad, we’ve managed to finish off yet another Sweet Valley series! Well, okay, this one only had two books, but it’s a series and it’s done being recapped now, so that’s what is important. It was actually quite difficult to find this book on eBay. I was trolling the site for like a year before one became available. If you have it, save it because it will surely be worth loads of money one day.
First thing I would like to note about this book, is the clip art that appears in the chapter headings. I mean, it looks cheap even by Sweet Valley standards. Suffice to say, no expense was spared for this book.
I should preface this recap by saying that I know very little about volleyball as a sport, but I assume the ghostwriter knows even less than I do so I should be okay.
Elizabeth and Jessica are walking on the beach. Liz enthuses that she feels “GRRREAT!” (tm Tony the Tiger). We get the “alike but different” spiel. The author tells us that the girls are like the sports they have chosen. Jessica does gymnastics because she likes to be the center of attention (and, one assumes, not to get her period); Liz does volleyball so she can share her victories with her teammates (and give them condescending shoulder pats when they screw up).
The Sandra of the title, it turns out, is the volleyball coach and she’s just wonderful. Liz loves her to bits. Usually Sandra doesn’t coach middle school girls-oh no-she coaches college teams, but she’s pregnant so she can’t be at SVU. (Either Sandra was inappropriately fired for being pregnant or she doesn’t know the meaning of the phrase “maternity leave.” I’ll leave it up to you to decide who is stupider.) Sandra has only been coaching the girls for two weeks and she must have some kind of magic wand (magic fetus?) because now they have a shot to make the California Games. Also, Liz only started playing a couple weeks ago but now she’s the STAR. Of course she is. During practice Liz picks apart the other girls’ weaknesses. And she’s supposed to be the nice one.
The team: Elizabeth, Maria Slater, Ellen Riteman, Kimberly Haver, Mandy Miller and Cammi Adams (remember her?). Oh and they play on the beach, even though Wikipedia tells me that beach volleyball has two players and indoor volleyball has six.
After practice they go to Casey’s an eat ice cream, because that’s how you prepare for high-level competition in Sweet Valley. Kimberly lets it slip that Sandra played in the Olympics. She explains that her dad is a big fan of volleyball which I read to mean “likes to perv on bikini clad women”. Sandra insists she wasn’t a very good volleyball player, she was just a really hard worker. Yeah, you know those Olympics, they’re always featuring people who suck at their sports. Anyway, Liz takes this to mean that *she* (because everything is about her) should work really hard and it will impress Sandra.
Despite the Olympics, Sandra says, her happiest memory was winning the California Games. Oh, come on. I’m sure the Olympics are much cooler. They’re in a foreign country not boring old Sweet Valley. Also, Sandra just said like two pages ago that she grew up in Kansas-why was she even at the California Games? I have mental images of some hillbilly running out onto the beach in the middle of a game and the announcer shouting, “Get that girl from Kansas off the field! How dare she!”
That night, the Unicorn Club has a meeting. Janet is like, “You guys have to win because it’ll make me look good.”I don’t think Janet has a good concept of reality. Kimberly is the captain of the volleyball team but she thinks Liz is trying to steal the spotlight-and Sandra’s love-from her. To be fair, she probably is. Kim bitches that she wishes all the girls on the team were Unicorns. (I realize, belatedly, that this must’ve been written before the Unicorn Club series.)
Meanwhile, the Wakefield family is going on a vacation, so Jessica had to miss the Unicorn meeting. They are going to spend the weekend at their “Great-Aunt Helen’s.” Has this woman been mentioned before? Liz says she’s one of her favorite relatives. There needs to be a Wakefield family tree with a key that explains that some of them exist in certain books but not in others.
Then the ghostwriter skips over the actual visit to Great-Aunt Helen (because she doesn’t exist?) to Monday at school. Elizabeth had a great idea over the weekend. She wants to have a baby shower for Sandra so she can suck up. Maria tells her that Mandy already had that idea and Liz is jealous because wanted to plan the party. (I assume this means Liz intended an Elizabeth themed extravaganza with a cake in the shape of her face, and Liz-themed games like pin the Pacific Ocean Blue-Green eyes on the face or something.) That day, the volleyball team prepares for their first qualifying match by scrimmaging three-on-three. Kim is snotty to Liz. They keep trying to “impress” Sandra by playing like they are the only people on the beach.
If Sandra is such a great coach, how come she doesn’t notice they don’t play like a team?
Liz and Maria decide to show off after practice and stay late. They are such brown-nosers. Eventually the rest of the team has the same idea and they end up playing Unicorns vs. Non-Unicorns. They’re all really tired but no one wants to say so because they want to act tough. I’m sure they’ll be fresh as daisies tomorrow!
Before the qualifying match, Sandra tells the girls, “As long as you remember to think like a team, everything will be fine.” So… they’re going to suck, right? No! The other team is simply terrible and they beat them easily. Even a crappy Sweet Valley team could beat a team from any other place, obviously. Kimberly becomes over-confident that they will win the California Games. Liz, meanwhile, decides that when she writes about the match for the Sixers she’ll also do a feature piece on Sandra, so she can ass-kiss some more.
Sandra praises all the girls in turn. Liz becomes jealous when she says that Ellen “worked hard” during the game. Again, because Liz is convinced Sandra’s comment earlier in the book about working hard was directed at Elizabeth alone not the team at large. She thinks, “As far as Elizabeth was concerned, Ellen was the typical Unicorn-which meant she didn’t even know the meaning of hard work.” Okay, Liz, you’ve now lost the right to complain about Kimberly being bitchy because you’ve out-bitched her.
Then, Sandra goes in on the stuff they did wrong in the match that day. Liz is shocked. She actually says to Maria, “I thought we were perfect.” Liz is used to being perfect. She actually starts to cry when Sandra says she passed the ball too often. Has she never played a sport before? There’s no such thing as a perfect game! Afterward, they practice and Liz takes Sandra’s criticism (to be aggressive) too much to heart and she starts going after balls that she shouldn’t. She ends up colliding with Maria. By the end of the practice, they are all pissed at each other.
Next match, a lot of people, including Jessica and Lila, turn up to watch because they heard the team was soooo good. This time they are playing Big Mesa. Liz starts it off by diving for a ball that should’ve been Cammi’s, and then pretty soon they’re all fighting each other for the glory. Because she sees where this is going, Lila leaves. The team loses to Big Mesa. They all blame each other and the trouble spills over into their next practice.
I’m getting a bit sick of this. They don’t get along. Get on with it already!
Liz and Mandy fight about the shower planning. Mandy thinks she has loads of time and doesn’t need Liz bossing her around. Liz, on the other hand, likes to boss. Sandra tries to make them do a drill where they work like a team, but the team is epic fail. Then, because she’s sick of hearing the girls whine, Sandra passes out. At least, I assume that’s why.
The girls fight about who should call their mom. I yell at them, “You should call 911, idiots!” but they do not listen to me. Mandy, Cammi and Ellen all run for pay phones but none of them get anyone because they are TOO STUPID TO CALL 911. Kimberly finally has the bright idea of sending Liz and Maria for a lifeguard. That’s kind of not a waste of time because the lifeguard can radio for an ambulance which would’ve already been on the way if the other three had called 911 in the first place. Ugh.
Liz goes to the hospital with flowers and finds out that Sandra went into labor and the baby is in the NICU. The nurses won’t let her see Sandra (which surprises me. I thought they’d say “Immediate family only-oh, you’re a Wakefield, come on in then!) but she is allowed to peer through the nursery’s window at the baby. Mandy is there and she assures Liz that doctors can do “incredible” things, which we’re told is a reference to the fact that Mandy had cancer a week and a half ago, but is now well enough to play bitchy volleyball.
Liz doesn’t think the team can win any matches without Sandra. She tells Mr. Bowman (the adviser to the Sixers) this and he says, “I bet you can think of a way to rally your teammates.” What? She’s the bitch that started it! But at practice that evening, Liz takes charge and starts ordering the other girls around. Kimberly is pissed. She’s like, “Um, I’m the captain” but the other girls shush here and say that they’re doing this for Sandra.
Basically, the moral of this story is that you should shut up and let Liz be bossy. Trying to argue with her only causes problems.
The team wins their next match against El Carro. But their second game, against Cedar Springs, doesn’t go so well. They usually play three matches and the best two out of three wins. After the first match they are down, until Liz bossily tells them they should agree to a three hit rule. That means, each opportunity, no one can try to spike it really, because they have to hit it three times before sending it over the net. That’s how our gym teacher made us play in grammar school. The other girls rightly point out that it’ll be hard to win that way but Liz makes them agree to it “for Sandra.” Again, the moral here is to do whatever Liz says because although they don’t win, someone they tie for the final spot in the California Games play-offs (I’m irritated because I thought the California Games was the next level. But this is qualifying, then they have play offs and then there is the California Games. Ugh. This could go on forever). Anyway, Sweet Valley wins their first play off match because the other tea forfeits. I assume they know that this book series is “Team Sweet Valley” not “Team El Carro” and they wisely decide to spend their time elsewhere.
For their second and final play-off game, the girls are playing Big Mesa again. It seems like the girls only ever play Big Mesa and El Carro. I bet the ghostwriter is too lazy to come up with another team name. Liz tells Maria they are going to win this time and that they have to think “positively.” Maria never heard of that before. I add “created the Secret” to my mental list of offenses Elizabeth Wakefield has committed against humanity.
The girls get all misty before the game because they think about how they weren’t able to “think like a team” when it really counted-that is, when Sandra passed out. They decide they will think like a team now to make up for it. (I’m sure Sandra is in the hospital like, “Gee, thanks, my baby might die but at least you made it to the California Games…”)
Lila and Jessica cheer the team on. This time Lila stays. We learn she’s a terrible volleyball player because she’s afraid of breaking a nail. I love Lila. I always hated volleyball for that same reason. It takes forever to get my nails to grow and I’m going to waste it for one point? I don’t think so. Jessica wonders why Big Mesa don’t just give up because she wants Sweet Valley to win. This makes me laugh. Oh, sociopathic Jessica.
Sweet Valley wins the first match. Then Big Mesa wins the second. So, whoever wins the third goes to the California Games. I look at the number of pages left. Only a few. That means there is no way the actual California Games are even in this book. What a rip-off. Maybe they planned to cover that in later books. Too bad this series was cancelled after this one!
The team fights. I’d tell you more about the specifics of the fight but I’m sick of it. Just then, Sandra shows up in the crowd and they’re all like “Oh we have to win now!” I can’t believe she took time out from her sick baby to suffer through the whining of these girls. I guess dealing with them is kind of like dealing with a sick baby. They shriek and cry and shit all over each other. Kind of?
Predictably, Team Sweet Valley wins the final match against Big Mesa and earns a spot in the California Games. Also predictably, Sandra tells them she’s feeling better and her son, Christopher, is out of the hospital now. I call shenanigans. My sister and I were born two months early, which is the same amount of time this baby was, and we weren’t out of the hospital in a week.
The final scene is the team throwing a baby shower for Sandra. It ends up being at the Wakefield’s house, so once again, Liz got her way. Sandra opens the presents and finds out that the girls all got her the same thing. Instead of being rightly pissed she laughs and says they are finally thinking like a team.
Groan.
I think this is a giant conspiracy. I mean, I keep talking about trying to get ALL the books recapped and I was so excited when we "completed" series. Now LJ is taking my accomplishments away from me. I will not stand for it. If you find any broken links in the profile please let me know ASAP. I'm not going down without a fight! They will have to pry my recaps from my cold dead hands! ... or something.
Luckily, I write my recaps in MS Word and then copy paste them so I still have this one on my computer. SUCK IT, LIVEJOURNAL. I'm going to repost it now. Old members of the community will have read it already, but hey we've had a lot of new people since then so maybe you'd like to read it!
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Team Sweet Valley #2: Win One for Sandra
Rejoice and be glad, we’ve managed to finish off yet another Sweet Valley series! Well, okay, this one only had two books, but it’s a series and it’s done being recapped now, so that’s what is important. It was actually quite difficult to find this book on eBay. I was trolling the site for like a year before one became available. If you have it, save it because it will surely be worth loads of money one day.
First thing I would like to note about this book, is the clip art that appears in the chapter headings. I mean, it looks cheap even by Sweet Valley standards. Suffice to say, no expense was spared for this book.
I should preface this recap by saying that I know very little about volleyball as a sport, but I assume the ghostwriter knows even less than I do so I should be okay.
Elizabeth and Jessica are walking on the beach. Liz enthuses that she feels “GRRREAT!” (tm Tony the Tiger). We get the “alike but different” spiel. The author tells us that the girls are like the sports they have chosen. Jessica does gymnastics because she likes to be the center of attention (and, one assumes, not to get her period); Liz does volleyball so she can share her victories with her teammates (and give them condescending shoulder pats when they screw up).
The Sandra of the title, it turns out, is the volleyball coach and she’s just wonderful. Liz loves her to bits. Usually Sandra doesn’t coach middle school girls-oh no-she coaches college teams, but she’s pregnant so she can’t be at SVU. (Either Sandra was inappropriately fired for being pregnant or she doesn’t know the meaning of the phrase “maternity leave.” I’ll leave it up to you to decide who is stupider.) Sandra has only been coaching the girls for two weeks and she must have some kind of magic wand (magic fetus?) because now they have a shot to make the California Games. Also, Liz only started playing a couple weeks ago but now she’s the STAR. Of course she is. During practice Liz picks apart the other girls’ weaknesses. And she’s supposed to be the nice one.
The team: Elizabeth, Maria Slater, Ellen Riteman, Kimberly Haver, Mandy Miller and Cammi Adams (remember her?). Oh and they play on the beach, even though Wikipedia tells me that beach volleyball has two players and indoor volleyball has six.
After practice they go to Casey’s an eat ice cream, because that’s how you prepare for high-level competition in Sweet Valley. Kimberly lets it slip that Sandra played in the Olympics. She explains that her dad is a big fan of volleyball which I read to mean “likes to perv on bikini clad women”. Sandra insists she wasn’t a very good volleyball player, she was just a really hard worker. Yeah, you know those Olympics, they’re always featuring people who suck at their sports. Anyway, Liz takes this to mean that *she* (because everything is about her) should work really hard and it will impress Sandra.
Despite the Olympics, Sandra says, her happiest memory was winning the California Games. Oh, come on. I’m sure the Olympics are much cooler. They’re in a foreign country not boring old Sweet Valley. Also, Sandra just said like two pages ago that she grew up in Kansas-why was she even at the California Games? I have mental images of some hillbilly running out onto the beach in the middle of a game and the announcer shouting, “Get that girl from Kansas off the field! How dare she!”
That night, the Unicorn Club has a meeting. Janet is like, “You guys have to win because it’ll make me look good.”I don’t think Janet has a good concept of reality. Kimberly is the captain of the volleyball team but she thinks Liz is trying to steal the spotlight-and Sandra’s love-from her. To be fair, she probably is. Kim bitches that she wishes all the girls on the team were Unicorns. (I realize, belatedly, that this must’ve been written before the Unicorn Club series.)
Meanwhile, the Wakefield family is going on a vacation, so Jessica had to miss the Unicorn meeting. They are going to spend the weekend at their “Great-Aunt Helen’s.” Has this woman been mentioned before? Liz says she’s one of her favorite relatives. There needs to be a Wakefield family tree with a key that explains that some of them exist in certain books but not in others.
Then the ghostwriter skips over the actual visit to Great-Aunt Helen (because she doesn’t exist?) to Monday at school. Elizabeth had a great idea over the weekend. She wants to have a baby shower for Sandra so she can suck up. Maria tells her that Mandy already had that idea and Liz is jealous because wanted to plan the party. (I assume this means Liz intended an Elizabeth themed extravaganza with a cake in the shape of her face, and Liz-themed games like pin the Pacific Ocean Blue-Green eyes on the face or something.) That day, the volleyball team prepares for their first qualifying match by scrimmaging three-on-three. Kim is snotty to Liz. They keep trying to “impress” Sandra by playing like they are the only people on the beach.
If Sandra is such a great coach, how come she doesn’t notice they don’t play like a team?
Liz and Maria decide to show off after practice and stay late. They are such brown-nosers. Eventually the rest of the team has the same idea and they end up playing Unicorns vs. Non-Unicorns. They’re all really tired but no one wants to say so because they want to act tough. I’m sure they’ll be fresh as daisies tomorrow!
Before the qualifying match, Sandra tells the girls, “As long as you remember to think like a team, everything will be fine.” So… they’re going to suck, right? No! The other team is simply terrible and they beat them easily. Even a crappy Sweet Valley team could beat a team from any other place, obviously. Kimberly becomes over-confident that they will win the California Games. Liz, meanwhile, decides that when she writes about the match for the Sixers she’ll also do a feature piece on Sandra, so she can ass-kiss some more.
Sandra praises all the girls in turn. Liz becomes jealous when she says that Ellen “worked hard” during the game. Again, because Liz is convinced Sandra’s comment earlier in the book about working hard was directed at Elizabeth alone not the team at large. She thinks, “As far as Elizabeth was concerned, Ellen was the typical Unicorn-which meant she didn’t even know the meaning of hard work.” Okay, Liz, you’ve now lost the right to complain about Kimberly being bitchy because you’ve out-bitched her.
Then, Sandra goes in on the stuff they did wrong in the match that day. Liz is shocked. She actually says to Maria, “I thought we were perfect.” Liz is used to being perfect. She actually starts to cry when Sandra says she passed the ball too often. Has she never played a sport before? There’s no such thing as a perfect game! Afterward, they practice and Liz takes Sandra’s criticism (to be aggressive) too much to heart and she starts going after balls that she shouldn’t. She ends up colliding with Maria. By the end of the practice, they are all pissed at each other.
Next match, a lot of people, including Jessica and Lila, turn up to watch because they heard the team was soooo good. This time they are playing Big Mesa. Liz starts it off by diving for a ball that should’ve been Cammi’s, and then pretty soon they’re all fighting each other for the glory. Because she sees where this is going, Lila leaves. The team loses to Big Mesa. They all blame each other and the trouble spills over into their next practice.
I’m getting a bit sick of this. They don’t get along. Get on with it already!
Liz and Mandy fight about the shower planning. Mandy thinks she has loads of time and doesn’t need Liz bossing her around. Liz, on the other hand, likes to boss. Sandra tries to make them do a drill where they work like a team, but the team is epic fail. Then, because she’s sick of hearing the girls whine, Sandra passes out. At least, I assume that’s why.
The girls fight about who should call their mom. I yell at them, “You should call 911, idiots!” but they do not listen to me. Mandy, Cammi and Ellen all run for pay phones but none of them get anyone because they are TOO STUPID TO CALL 911. Kimberly finally has the bright idea of sending Liz and Maria for a lifeguard. That’s kind of not a waste of time because the lifeguard can radio for an ambulance which would’ve already been on the way if the other three had called 911 in the first place. Ugh.
Liz goes to the hospital with flowers and finds out that Sandra went into labor and the baby is in the NICU. The nurses won’t let her see Sandra (which surprises me. I thought they’d say “Immediate family only-oh, you’re a Wakefield, come on in then!) but she is allowed to peer through the nursery’s window at the baby. Mandy is there and she assures Liz that doctors can do “incredible” things, which we’re told is a reference to the fact that Mandy had cancer a week and a half ago, but is now well enough to play bitchy volleyball.
Liz doesn’t think the team can win any matches without Sandra. She tells Mr. Bowman (the adviser to the Sixers) this and he says, “I bet you can think of a way to rally your teammates.” What? She’s the bitch that started it! But at practice that evening, Liz takes charge and starts ordering the other girls around. Kimberly is pissed. She’s like, “Um, I’m the captain” but the other girls shush here and say that they’re doing this for Sandra.
Basically, the moral of this story is that you should shut up and let Liz be bossy. Trying to argue with her only causes problems.
The team wins their next match against El Carro. But their second game, against Cedar Springs, doesn’t go so well. They usually play three matches and the best two out of three wins. After the first match they are down, until Liz bossily tells them they should agree to a three hit rule. That means, each opportunity, no one can try to spike it really, because they have to hit it three times before sending it over the net. That’s how our gym teacher made us play in grammar school. The other girls rightly point out that it’ll be hard to win that way but Liz makes them agree to it “for Sandra.” Again, the moral here is to do whatever Liz says because although they don’t win, someone they tie for the final spot in the California Games play-offs (I’m irritated because I thought the California Games was the next level. But this is qualifying, then they have play offs and then there is the California Games. Ugh. This could go on forever). Anyway, Sweet Valley wins their first play off match because the other tea forfeits. I assume they know that this book series is “Team Sweet Valley” not “Team El Carro” and they wisely decide to spend their time elsewhere.
For their second and final play-off game, the girls are playing Big Mesa again. It seems like the girls only ever play Big Mesa and El Carro. I bet the ghostwriter is too lazy to come up with another team name. Liz tells Maria they are going to win this time and that they have to think “positively.” Maria never heard of that before. I add “created the Secret” to my mental list of offenses Elizabeth Wakefield has committed against humanity.
The girls get all misty before the game because they think about how they weren’t able to “think like a team” when it really counted-that is, when Sandra passed out. They decide they will think like a team now to make up for it. (I’m sure Sandra is in the hospital like, “Gee, thanks, my baby might die but at least you made it to the California Games…”)
Lila and Jessica cheer the team on. This time Lila stays. We learn she’s a terrible volleyball player because she’s afraid of breaking a nail. I love Lila. I always hated volleyball for that same reason. It takes forever to get my nails to grow and I’m going to waste it for one point? I don’t think so. Jessica wonders why Big Mesa don’t just give up because she wants Sweet Valley to win. This makes me laugh. Oh, sociopathic Jessica.
Sweet Valley wins the first match. Then Big Mesa wins the second. So, whoever wins the third goes to the California Games. I look at the number of pages left. Only a few. That means there is no way the actual California Games are even in this book. What a rip-off. Maybe they planned to cover that in later books. Too bad this series was cancelled after this one!
The team fights. I’d tell you more about the specifics of the fight but I’m sick of it. Just then, Sandra shows up in the crowd and they’re all like “Oh we have to win now!” I can’t believe she took time out from her sick baby to suffer through the whining of these girls. I guess dealing with them is kind of like dealing with a sick baby. They shriek and cry and shit all over each other. Kind of?
Predictably, Team Sweet Valley wins the final match against Big Mesa and earns a spot in the California Games. Also predictably, Sandra tells them she’s feeling better and her son, Christopher, is out of the hospital now. I call shenanigans. My sister and I were born two months early, which is the same amount of time this baby was, and we weren’t out of the hospital in a week.
The final scene is the team throwing a baby shower for Sandra. It ends up being at the Wakefield’s house, so once again, Liz got her way. Sandra opens the presents and finds out that the girls all got her the same thing. Instead of being rightly pissed she laughs and says they are finally thinking like a team.
Groan.