What’s the function of the て form in this sentence?


For context, I’m reading Haikyuu!! and I'm stuck on this sentence:

> コート中央のネットを挟んで2チームでボールを打ち合う。

The verb 挟む is in the て form, but I can’t understand why, so I don’t get the
sentence. Is it connecting actions with an “and” or is there a use of the て
form here I'm not getting?




The te-form by itself is just "and" or "by". Xを挟む basically means "to put X
between two things" or "to sandwich X", and here "two things" refers to the
two teams of a volleyball game. The 5th definition of 挟む in jisho is
specifically about this usage:

> ### [挟む](https://jisho.org/word/%E6%8C%9F%E3%82%80)
>
>   5. to be on either side of (a road, table, etc.); to have between each
> other; to be across (a street, river, etc.)​
>

>

>> 彼らはテーブルをはさんで向かい合った。They confronted each other across the table.

Therefore:

> コート中央のネットを挟んで...
>
> (facing each other) across the net in the center of a court (and) ...

This 2チームで is an adverbial expression meaning something like "on a two-team
basis". See [this](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/77721/5010), too.
English has a word that corresponds to 1人で ("alone"), but somehow lacks
expressions that correspond to 2人で, 5人で, 2チームで and so on. So a very literal
translation would be "(People) sandwich the net in the center of a court, and
(then) mutually hit a ball on a two-team basis".

