Rottenburg

The Map24 printout said that the trip to Rottenburg would take about four hours. Apparently, the computer didn't adjust for Friday afternoon traffic...

Rottenburg is a college town with a lot of things going for it. The location is excellent, deep in the South of Germany, reasonably close to the border and surrounded by natural scenery.

The club is also fairly impressive. As one of the worst teams in the league, they average 2500 spectators per home game. The gym is a perfect place to play volleyball: the right size, high ceiling, nice atmosphere...and covered in pink paint. In my opinion, it's the best gym in the league.

Unfortunately for them, all of this hasn't been enough to create any success on the court.

Our guys came into this one with a slight tinge of urgency. We've lost two straight away matches and neither of those were pretty games. We all knew that if we played the same way we had we'd be looking at another disappointment. Besides that, we're in a dogfight for a good seed in the upcoming playoffs. The match against Rottenburg represented the last "easy" match of the year as we have Friedrichshafen, Dueren, Berlin and Eltmann remaining on the schedule. Two points were an absolute must.

To our credit, we came out playing well. Surprisingly, Rottenburg didn't just lay down in the face of the Wuppertal juggernaut, they decided to play a good match as well. We weathered their first set assault and won a close one.

As we have done so many times before this season, we lost intensity in the second set, and ended up losing that one without putting any real pressure on them.

After a little talking to in the locker room we got our game together and figured out a way to win the last two sets.

Overall, the game was fairly unremarkable. We played fairly well in the three sets that we won and we have to be happy with that. But, this was a match that we had to win so there can't be too much celebrating about it. I think we're satisfied and happy enough to move on towards what is going to be a hard final stretch of the season. If we can get a few wins we'll be in great shape for the playoffs. If not, it's going to be interesting to see how it all shakes out.