Odense, Denmark

When we left for Denmark, I was pretty excited for a few different reasons. Besides being free from punishing my body physically everyday and the chance to finally play a little more volleyball. I was mainly interested in what it would be like to play some matches against Pepperdine.

As long as I have been here in Europe, I’ve wondered how well teams from the American college system would fair against teams from Europe. It’s been a topic of discussion with nearly any foreigner that I have ever encountered during the time that I have been here without anyone ever being able to make a defining argument for either side. I’ve heard people say that American teams would dominate in Denmark, I’ve heard that they would be somewhere in the middle and I’ve heard that they wouldn’t do as well as it seems they would. My feeling has always been that a good American team would sit somewhere in the top four in Denmark. What made this trip even better was that we would get to see how well a good American team would do against teams from not only Denmark, but Sweden and Germany as well.

Personally, getting to play against Pepperdine again was a special experience. I’ve known their coach, Marv Dunphy for a long, long time. Both my parents went there and my dad played both with and under him back in the 70’s. Plus, Pepperdine is always a good team, so they were a perfect sample for the comparison of American and European volley. And the result is that they did pretty well without really proving anything.

We spent four days in Sønderborg team building and playing American football and Frisbee golf while still training some volleyball and playing two matches against Pepperdine. It was nice to be back in Denmark for a little while, especially on the coast with easy access to the ocean and beaches. I’m not exactly sure that I’m ever going to be ready to live too far away from the sea like here in the middle of the European continent. The air is just different.

But, the time was well spent. We were head and shoulders above Pepperdine in the two training matches that we played, winning 8-1 over the two days. Unfortunately for them, they were missing one of their best players (a 201cm outside hitter) from the beginning and lost yet another starting outside hitter in the middle of our first match when he dislocated his shoulder in a collision with another teammate. As far as the volleyball went, their biggest problem is being young and undeveloped. Their first seven were possibly physical enough to play with us but as soon as you got down into their bench, they just weren’t strong or experienced enough to play with anyone on our team.

Some notes from their team: I loved their setter, great size, great hands and a good attitude as far as I could tell. He’s got to work a little more on the way he runs his offense and try to put more tempo into his sets because generally they weren’t fast enough. But those are things that can easily be corrected in the next couple of years, he is still very young. Otherwise, their middles were generally more effective than most of the other teams we saw in Denmark. Somehow, I feel that American teams put more emphasis on attacking out of the middle. When I was in college, all I heard was set to the middle repetitively, and it seems like Pepperdine did that with a lot of success as well. I don’t think they looked real impressive but I would guess that their middles hit a very high percentage.

Otherwise, the trip was a success. We won the Marienlyst tournament with only a few problems along the way, including a five set final. The tournament looked pretty solid, if a little early in the season, with a nice mixture of teams from Denmark and abroad. I should say congratulations to Jesper Hansen and the rest of the club for organizing everything and pulling it off without a hitch.

It looks like the Danish league is going to be competitive again this year with four, five or possibly even six pretty good teams fighting at the top. From the looks of things, Marienlyst and Gentofte are a tad ahead of the rest of the pack, but lots of things always happen once the season gets going.

Overall, a good experience, capped off by a classic night at Christian Firtal and Frank A. Good luck to everyone who was there. It’ll be exciting to see how things go.