Italians

Seeing that the Italians just won the European Championships reminded me about our CEV cup matches last year.

One of the main reasons that I came to play in Marienlyst last year was to get the chance to play in a European Cup tournament. I was slightly disappointed at first that we got to host the pool because that meant that we wouldn't get a chance to do some traveling. Seeing foreign gyms in weird out of the way places is exciting for me. I was hoping we would get to play somewhere in Siberia just to see what it would be like...

But, it turned out to be a really good experience for our team. Losing all three matches was not that exciting, except perhaps the loss to the Czech team where Martin Olafsen almost lost his mind, but it definitely helped our team develop. And looking back at the matches, there is no doubt that we could have won two of them. The match against the Italians was a different story altogether...

To this day I honestly don't know what happened in that match. I guess you could say that we were just happy to be there and that all of us gave them too much credit before the match even started. At times it did feel like we were little school children trying to beat the full grown men on the other side of the net. But I really think that most of that loss just had to do with them starting out in a comfortable rhythm and us being unable to break them out of that rhythm. I think the main differences between the teams were the passing - we could not pass their serves, they handled ours as if we were serving underhand - and their middle play. At various points in the match, Andre hit the ball over our middles somewhere in front of the three meter line. There was little we could do about it.

I still haven't tried to watch the tape of that match. I have no particular desire to punish myself by seeing it. However, In some strange way I cherish the memories of that match, as if being pounded by a team from Italy is every volleyball player's rite of passage.