Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Quick Training Tournament in Aalborg

This weekend we were in Aalborg to play against Sk Aarhus and Aalborg. Originally it was just supposed to be against Aalborg but apparently Sk Aarhus asked if they could join us and unfortunately they were accepted. I have no problem with Aarhus, and I love all the guys that are still there from when I played there, but the team they brought this weekend was barely a team. There were maybe three or four guys who have elite division experience and the rest were just thrown together in what seemed like the last second.

Anyways, we played SK first and it wasn't much of a match. I think they might have gotten 15 or 16 points in one of the sets. I will say that their new Japanese setter is good though. Lots of energy and lots of noise - fun to watch. Unfortunately he didn't have a whole lot of good passing to work with... I'm sure they will be alot better once the other guys are around (Brian when he is healthy again, Sasha who deserved more of a chance to play last year in my opinion, Danny Kurulyo (sp?) who played with Middelfart last year, and knowing Thorkild, a few more) and ready to play, but at the moment I would not include SK as a team with a chance to win a medal.

Aalborg looks fairly promising, they played against us without Jeppe or Mikkel and still played well. Thomas Bach is playing extremely well at the moment but I still have some reservations about their passing. I think it is going to be hard for them to transition from Jesper Villadsen and Jesper Madsen being their main passers to what they have this year. The new setter is also good though, athletic and solid, hopefully he lasts a whole season for them... They definitey will be a team to reckon with as always this year as long as their passing holds up.

As far as our team goes, I think we played ok but it is early and of course there is a lot of room for improvement. Stewart has been solid so far and I hope he continues to be that way, it's fun to have such a slimy hitter on our team, I don't think I have ever played with someone like that before. We'll have to keep working hard with our blocking and defense, but Jesper Hansen and BT continue to do things well as always. At the moment we need our outside hitters to be ready because we only have three. As soon as Nathan comes from Australia we should be in much better shape for training and in games. Until then, I hope that we can continue to improve as we look forward to the Middelfart tournament and to our Top Teams Cup matches in Austria.

Match Scores:
SK Aarhus - Marienlyst: 0:3
HIK - Marienlyst: 1-3

4 comments:

Kasper said...

Being unfamiliar with Stewart and the term "slimy" used to describe a hitter, I was wondering if you could elaborate.

Jordan said...

Slimy: in volleyball it means a player who uses the block a lot as well as the net and whatever else possible to get kills. I would describe Teis as a slimy beach volleyball hitter... I think if Stewart got set one on one and had a whole half of the court to hit into he would still hit the ball off the blocker and out...

Anonymous said...

Hehe, ok. I was wondering myself what "slimy" was. I hate that kind of hitter...almost impossible to block...
Well, hitting the ball so it just touches the net is ok...that just means that you optimized your angle of attack. Remember, always hit hard and short..
Mikkel Andersen, Aalborg HIK.

Anonymous said...

Always low angles!!!!