An Ode to Sideout Scoring

It looks like Friedrichshafen is going to win the finals here in Germany. And may I say, a fitting end to a great season for them. Winning the Champions League, the German Cup and now the Bundesliga title. Okay, they haven't won yet, but it would take a very surprising turn of events for them to lose.

The triple. That sounds pretty good.

Talking to a few people here in Germany, it seems like Friedrichshafen's success could have an effect on volleyball in general throughout the country. More coverage, more sponsors, more money, more fans, more interest. Hopefully it's true.

I've been thinking hard about volleyball the last few weeks. Why isn't it as popular as some other sports? Why aren't our fan numbers growing?

I don't have any real answers, but at some point, I thought to myself, maybe volleyball just isn't that exciting to watch. I mean, it's hard to admit it, being a volleyball player and a lover of the sport, but it's very possible. We've changed the format of the game to be more friendly to television and I guess it's helped in getting volleyball on TV more often. But I still look at the stands and I see an empty arena. We talk about how to "fix" the game so that it is more appealing to more people. The more I think about the idea of "fixing" volleyball, the more disgusted I feel.

I love the game the way it is. Actually, I love the game the way it WAS. I loved sideout scoring. I think that was the coolest thing about volleyball. You had to score a point in your own serve to win a point. And that meant you had to battle for it. Scoring a point was genuinely exciting - for players and for fans - because it was something out of the ordinary, there was a level of difficulty to scoring a real point.

I honestly think that the players have become less interesting since the abolition of sideout scoring. We are more business like, more calm, more focused. Points are easy to come by, all you have to do is sideout, do it 25 times in a row and the game will be over. It's like each team is a big indistinguishable mass of people with no discernible personality because really, what is there to get excited about? Who do people always enjoy watching? Brazil. Why? Because they are the only team that really look like they are enjoying the game. Each point is a celebration. No one else plays that way, no one else has the energy to do it.

I was at a basketball game the other day. And at one particularly exciting point in the game, before I realized what I was doing, I jumped to my feet. It felt totally natural. I was caught up in the moment and I realized afterward that I hadn't felt that way in a long time.

There are only two times where modern volleyball really gets exciting these days. One is when there is a long rally with a lot of great defense. The other is when the score reaches a deuce situation. 24-24 and the teams continue siding out back and forth. That's it.

Let me set the scene for you: Your favorite team is serving, they are ahead 12-10 in the old scoring system, a really good serve is passed poorly by the other team, they set a high ball to the outside who hits the ball well cutting it back to the corner over the setter's head, your position six defender dives to his right and just barely digs the ball with one hand, it comes up high enough for your setter to get under it and make a high set to position 4... This is where I would be feeling that anticipation, that feeling in my stomach, waiting, hoping to see my team's outside make a great swing on the ball and give us a big point to go up 13-10. Can anyone remember that feeling? Am I the only one who used to feel it? In the rally scoring system, this point is still nice, you are still happy to see it as a fan, but it isn't the same. It's just another point. Especially if say, your team wins the point and then goes back and makes a service mistake. All the points mean the same thing and in the end they all kind of blend together.

I recognize the importance of the rally scoring system for the "popularity" of the sport. Of course it is good that the sport is on television more often, but, it seems to me, volleyball was on TV all the time before. I watched because it was exciting then. I watch now because I want it to be exciting.

Where are we headed?

Volleyball players move around a lot. Being a professional is committing yourself to a rootless lifestyle. It's hard to really get comfortable in one place when you easily could be moving somewhere else in a year. What's funny is that each new year, more or less, follows the same program as previous years. Figure out a way to move all your stuff to new place, spend first month trying to get internet and telephone set up and spending way too much on food, spend the next couple of months figuring out the new city, learning where to shop and where to go to have fun. Spend next couple of months repeating the same daily schedule. Spend last months looking forward to the playoffs and figuring out where you will spend next year. Repeat.

Since it is that time of year where everyone is out looking for new jobs (at least the people who aren't ballsy enough to wait until just before next season when they could make even better money but might end up without anything) I thought I would share my thoughts on the whole process.

I've played at three different clubs during my career, switching from SK Aarhus to Marienlyst and from Marienlyst to SV Bayer Wuppertal. The first time, I switched because I thought that Marienlyst provided a much better environment for the players. And it did. The second time, I switched because I wanted to push my limits as a player. I did. There are lots of other reasons to move: experiencing something new, exploring a different culture and the likelihood that I'll be playing for a winning team all play important roles in the decision making process.

Money has never been a big issue for me. True, it's nice to make more money than the year before. But, the money that I make, and this isn't true for some volleyball players who make very good money, is never going to be enough to make me feel rich. I'm not in the class of players who can demand huge sums of cash, therefore there are many other things that mean more to me than money when I'm looking at a potential club to play for.

First, I look at the team and I look at the staff surrounding the team. Do I think I would be a good fit there? Do I think that the staff is reliable and that the players are willing to work hard enough to win? Can we win more than we are going to lose? Is the coach crazy? Is the coach crazy in a bad way? Then I look at the technical stuff. The city and the arena etc...

What I really want though, and this may sound kind of weird, is to know that the club really wants me. Before coming to Europe to play, I used to marvel over how professional athletes in the US could leave a great situation where they had played for many years and were loved by the community, etc... over a few million dollars. They make so much money, I couldn't understand how a couple million dollars could convince a player to just get up and leave a team and move to some other place. Well, the answer is the other team made them feel wanted. That extra money shows that they are willing to go the extra mile for that player. It shows that they believe in that player and want to show that by giving more.

If a club is willing to do something extra for me, then I will seriously consider playing for them. It seems like a simple thing, but not every team manager or club owner understands this very well. Of course, there are certain conditions that have to be met, but a little attention from the club's side can go a long way. I think every athlete likes to have their ego stroked a little bit here and there...

Over?

Coming from the University system in the States,where the volleyball season is much shorter than in Europe, it's surprising how fast the last eight months have gone by. Like I said in the last post: you play and play and play and all of a sudden it's the playoffs and you have one match that decides everything.

Now, the season is over and it still hasn't really registered with me.

Coming into our last match in Unterhaching, and for the first time in a long time, I didn't really have an idea of how everything would turn out. Somehow neither winning nor losing seemed probable. So it was just as much as a spectator looking forward to a great match as a player that I walked into their gym last Tuesday.

It turned out to be a bad experience in both respects.

The match was ugly for us. Nothing really worked at any point. Setting rhythm, serving, blocking, defense, nothing looked sharp. It's not the first time that we took a beating in an away game this year but it certainly was the most disappointing. No one wants to come up empty in a match with so much significance. That's perhaps the best way to describe the feeling afterwards: empty. In a way, it's a fitting end for our team, it's been a roller coaster year, full of ups and downs - most of the ups coming at home and most of the downs coming away - and everytime we had a chance to really break through we took a step backwards instead. It happened in the pokal quarter final, it happened away against Delitzsch and Leipzig and it happened again on Tuesday. All I can say is that hopefully the disappointment turns into motivation and experience for the future.

Personally, I've got all sorts of mixed emotions. While I feel like I contributed a lot to this team, if not in the matches where I played, then definitely in training, I also feel like I never got enough playing time to really get comfortable and make the kind of difference that I wanted to make. I developed my game like crazy and I found out that I am absolutely good enough to be a player in the league, I also had a chance to play significantly and beat a team like SCC Berlin, and that feels good.

As I look forward to next year, I have no idea what is going to happen. Wuppertal has expressed interest in keeping me here, and that would be great, but expressing interest and offering something concrete are two completely different things. Surprisingly, considering the amount of playing time I got this year, I've aready received quite a few phone calls asking about availability for next year. It's always flattering to hear that kind of thing.

At this point, I've got no idea what I want to do. And I'll definitely write more as I work my way through the confusion in the next couple of weeks. Until then, as you can see above, I'm on vacation!

Playoff Time

It's weird when playoff time rolls around. I mean, on one hand, it is what you've been waiting for the whole season. On the other hand, it feels rushed, almost like you can't enjoy it before it's gone. With all the preparation, daily practices/weights, scouting, traveling the last five days feel like a blur. We've been to Unterhaching and back, lost, practiced a little bit and won our match at home. Now, we're looking at a match this Tuesday that has all sorts of implications.

If we win, we finish in the top four no matter what. On top of that, the season lasts another month, during which, we'll play the semi-finals and the finals or 3rd/4th place qualification no matter what. If we lose, the season's over and we're more or less finished. On top of all that, if we win, we're qualified to play European cup tournaments next year. If we lose, we're not. So, you could say that this match means a lot - in a lot of different ways.

In any case, it feels weird to be sitting here, waiting for a deciding third game that carries so much baggage. It just feels like we could have done without half of the regular season games and just gotten down to business with the playoffs. I mean, we play all of these matches over seven months and everything gets decided in about a week. There isn't really anything to be done about it except win!

Besides all the playoff stuff, this time of year is always an interesting time for a volleyball professional. It's the time of year where you sit and wonder about what you're going to be doing at this time NEXT year. And since the majority of volleyball contracts last one year there are a whole lot of athletes in the same situation.

I'll write more about this process soon. For now, worrying about the playoffs and finishing this season is enough without adding the invariably convoluted contract negotiations.

One more day at home before we hit the road for the long trip down to Munich on Monday and hopefully the triumphant return trip Tuesday night!