Bodensee - A Nice Place to Be!

The German Cup tournament finally opened up this weekend for us with a match in a little city named Konstanz. Located on the border with Switzerland, the city is home to a lot of students who come to enjoy the incredibly nice, laid back atmosphere. Lake Bodensee, one of the biggest lakes in the area, is also close.

As it turns out, the gym was located right on the shores of a quiet river that flows into a bigger lake just nearby. One of the smaller halls actually had a huge windowed façade facing the flowing water. After a short walk and a bite to eat I was ready to proclaim the city of Konstanz as the nicest in all of Germany.

The team from Konstanz was not particularly impressive. They weren’t supposed to be, playing in the third division, but I expected them to come with a little bit more than they did. The match was nothing too spectacular - we played fine and that was plenty to win. The most memorable moments were Dirk helping a serve that wouldn’t have gone over the net by bouncing it off his hand at the net and the referee not calling anything, Dirk also made a nice play when he had a short joust with the setter then proceeded to hold the ball in one hand after the setter let go (the referee failed to call this a lift, choosing instead to call a replay) and of course the Konstanz middle who had red contacts which made his eyes look exceedingly weird.

The biggest news came from the drawing of lots for the next round of the tournament which took place directly after our match. In probably the best scenario possible, we drew SCC Berlin at home on the 22nd of this month. I wrote last time that we would have to wait quite a long time to prove that we are a better team than Berlin. Well, it looks like that won’t be the case! I think everyone is excited for the match-up and hopefully we’ll be able to come out of this one with a big win.

Two Weekends - Two Losses

Last weekend, we hosted a four-team tournament. Eltmann from Germany, Opava from the Czech Republic, Marienlyst from Denmark and Us were the participants. Unfortunately for us, we finished fourth with Eltmann finishing first, Marienlyst second and Opava third.

It wasn’t our finest hour and there is little to say besides we are lucky that the tournament means nothing as far as official records are concerned. Hopefully we learned some lessons from the way we played and hopefully those lessons will have a positive effect on the rest of the season.

Personally, I played one set against Eltmann which we won, and then a full three sets against Marienlyst which ended 2-1 for them. I’ll be the first to admit that losing to a former team doesn’t feel good. On the one hand, I’m happy for all the guys on the team that I played with for two years, they played really well. On the other hand, losing sucks. Needless to say, the weekend was not a good experience for me personally. I didn’t play well, and the team didn’t play well, and that’s never a recipe for success.

So, congratulations to Marienlyst for the second place, and congrats to Eltmann for winning the whole thing. We’ll see you guys soon though in the Bundesliga…

On Sunday we finally resumed our Bundesliga schedule with a match against SCC Berlin, in Berlin. Traditionally, they’ve been a top team in the German league but this year there has been some talk of them slipping. At the end of November they lost 3-0 to Unterhaching and it appeared that they were in a bit of a crisis. As described above, we’ve been having our own troubles, but we had had a pretty good week of training and we came into the match feeling positive.

As it turned out, the match was hard to classify. We played well at times, they played well at times, we played poorly at times, they played poorly at times and generally, the momentum of the match swung back and forth often. In the end though, we lost 3-2 and have to feel upset about a lost opportunity. I say lost opportunity because there were certain points in the match where we had the chance to take it over and leave them behind. We had several leads, and we scored a ton of points in our own serve, but just as quickly we would give those points right back through our own personal errors.

Once again, I got a chance to come into the match later, playing all of the fourth and fifth sets. And I feel good about what I did while I was out there. I think that generally, the tide changed for us once I got the chance to do a few things, serving and running the offense especially, but I still made a few decisions that weren’t correct and it hurt us in a few spots.

We’ve got to take this match, take the positive out of it (we won a pressure filled fourth set 33-31 in a hostile environment) remember it and then use the negative (losing big leads several times) to motivate us for the future. We should also take confidence from this one and hopefully start to understand how good we are as a team. I think everyone feels that we’re a better team than Berlin, unfortunately, we’re going to have to wait quite a while before we get another chance to prove it.

Now, we look forward to our first Cup tournament match this Sunday in the far South. I know very little about the team we’re playing as they are from somewhere down around the third league, except that they played a close training match against Friedrichshafen (playing without either setter). In any case, nothing but a win will be acceptable.

Guests

As a part of the Marienlyst - Wuppertal cooperation agreement, Daniel Thompsen and Shane Alexander are both here for the week to train with us. So far, we've done very little ball work, opting instead, to lift weights and do more jump specific training. But, tonight we should have a mostly competetive practice and it should be interesting to see how they fit in with the rest of the guys. It's also great for us to have a couple extra players since we have had so many injuries lately. Although, with Shane, we now have three setters and that can never be a good thing. I might have to warm up the old shoulder and show the rest of the team how to put a couple of balls away.

Seriously though, it looks like Gergei and I will do a lot of switching in and out on one side while Shane runs a team on his own. Kind of a weird system but also kind of good for everyone. We get to work specifically with one side while Shane gets to figure things out and get a lot of touches. In any case, it should be nice to get a real strong practice under our belts, 6 vs. 6 is always so much better than 5 vs. 6 or whatever else. It makes a huge difference to have that complete team.

One of the major differences between what I’ve experienced in Germany so far and what I experienced while I played in Denmark is the difference in the general attitude of the people. It’s a hard thing to describe accurately, but there is a certain palpable excitement that flashes across people’s faces when you tell them that you are a professional volleyball player. In Denmark, I had many a conversation that sounded like this:

Random Person: “So, what are you doing in Denmark?”
Me (after awkward look comes across my face): “I play volleyball?” (The question in my voice making it obvious that I don’t expect them to know what I’m talking about).
Random Person: “Nåh… Can you live from that?”
Me: “Barely.”

And then we would move on. The point is that people were generally put off by the idea that I could play volleyball professionally. I don’t know if it was because they had never heard of that before, if volleyball is so small that most people don’t know there is even a league, or if they just didn’t really care, but it was almost always the same weird conversation. Of course, some people were more enthusiastic than others, but no one ever got that kind of starry-eyed look in their eye.

Now, I’m definitely not trying to insinuate that I’m living here in Germany, snorting gold-laced cocaine off of the backs of rare Asian imported white tigers, eating only green M&M’s, like a rock star; however, there is a big difference in the way I, and the team are perceived. People here want autographs, they want to shake our hands and generally, they treat us with more respect than we deserve. It’s a thrill and a weird feeling all in one. In any case, it’s a big difference from what I’m used to.

Interlude

I don't know if everyone knows this, but the Bundesliga is going to sleep for about a month starting this weekend. The break is because of the world championships in Japan in November and since Germany is competing several teams in the league will be missing players for the month.

What does that mean for the common man you ask? What will the average volleyball player be doing during this time?

Well, it means that we have a month without any league matches. It does not, however, mean we have no practice. Nope, we get one week off and then it's back to the grind. Circle/Circuit training will rear its ugly head, weight lifting will intensify and training will probably be a little bit more technical. Basically, we'll be doing all the same stuff we did during the pre-season in an effort to keep everyone's bodies from falling apart down the road.

We've been particularly affected by injuries so far this year losing a back up outside hitter for two months, one of our opposites until the end of November and Mads was just out for a little while. All of that besides the small injuries that everyone deals with day to day. But generally it has to be said that we're in pretty good shape at this point in the season. Sitting in third place after a good chunk of the first half of the schedule has been played. Admittedly, we've played our share of "weaker" teams, but none of those teams are easy teams to beat. From what everyone is saying, even though we aren't sitting in first place like last year, the team is playing better at this point in the season. So, hopefully things will continue to go the right way.

Over the weekend we played Rottenburg, a team that didn't play in the Bundesliga last year, and ended up winning 3-1. Again, I got a good chance to play in this match, coming in after the second set and helping our team win the last two. Things have gone well lately when I've been on the court and I've been pretty happy with the way I've developed. It's also fun to see the difference in our team when we switch setters. Gergei sets a lot more balls to the outside and pipe while I focus a lot on the middles and I think it throws other teams off to have to adjust to our very different playing styles. Of course, our own team has to adjust as well, but I don't think I've ever seen such a difference in style from one setter to the other.

We're going into the break optimistic after having accomplished a fair amount here in the beginning of the season. Good luck to everyone else who is actually playing during that time, I'm also looking forward to seeing Marienlyst come down here at the end of November, that should be fun as well. Also, good luck to those ripper Volleyroos, bloody oath!

First Start...Disaster.

Driving the six hours back from Friedrichshafen last night I had a good chance to consider a match that our team will remember for a long time. Friedrichshafen is, without a doubt, a good volleyball team with lots of physical, experienced players on their roster. Clearly, there were few outside of Wuppertal that gave us very much chance to win a match in their gym. And after the way we played last night, those people are justified.

Positively for myself, I got my first start in a Wuppertal jersey last night, something I had hoped for but was still a little surprised to have happen. Standing on the court before the match started I was excited, it felt good to be out there from the beginning, hopefully it will happen more often in the future.

But, on to the match, as a whole it was a poor performance from our team. Afterwards, Jens said that he felt that we were influenced by the fact that it was Friedrichshafen on the other side and that we gave them too much respect. Whether or not that is true is unimportant, because in the end, it looked like we were. The mistakes we made were the ones that you make when you play scared, when you play afraid of making mistakes. As much of a cliche as that is, it was obviously true. I tend to think that we all put too much pressure on ourselves. Generally, when everyone is telling each other to, "play loose" and that, "we have nothing to lose" then the match is already lost. Why should we play any different than any other time? As soon as you start saying, "let's play loose" you are pretty much guaranteed to play tight. And we did.

For a good portion of the first and third set we were actually playing good volleyball, aside from serving. Our sideout was effective and we were able to keep the score close for long sections. Unfortunately, we couldn't put any defensive/serve pressure on them and that just made it too easy for their side. In the end, we would make a couple of mistakes and they would make a few good serves and all of a sudden we would be behind by three or four points at the end of the set.

I've played in matches like this before and I think that is what makes me sick about this match in particular. The next day, or even hours after playing, you sit back and think about the match and you realize that you did play nervous in some aspects and that it was totally stupid. You need to play as best as you can and let the chips fall where they may, but you don't play tentative because that never does anything good for anyone. The feeling I have, is that if I could do it over again, I could play the match ten times better than I did, mostly from the service line, and that's a feeling that I don't want to have again. It's a feeling that I tell myself to remember because the next time I am in that same situation, I have to be able to change my focus and get better. And that's what I want to kick myself for, because I know better.

Anyways, there were some positives, setting wise, I feel good about what I did yesterday. I'm unhappy with two or three decisions but those are going to happen sometimes. Otherwise, we can take this loss and turn it into something positive I hope. I think that if we all understand what happened yesterday and decide to embrace the fact that we can all learn from it we will get better and we will be better prepared to play in the same kind of match in the future. Even more importantly, even though we were controlled by them yesterday, that team is not unbeatable. And in the face of such a bad loss, we'll have to take whatever we can get out of it and move on.

Game Time

I finally got a chance to play a fair amount in our match against VCO Berlin and I'll tell you what - playing is more fun than not playing!

We drove to Berlin a few men short, Lars and David are out with long term injuries and in the morning training before we left, Mads hurt his knee. So, going into the match we knew that there were two people left on the bench who could actually play if necessary: Me and a middle blocker, Andi.

We won the first set and lost the second, both semi-close. I came in at the end of the second set and played the last ten points, got subbed out for the last point and to my surprise came back to start the 3rd set. From there I played the rest of the way. We ended up winning the 3rd and 4th, still close, but no question about it, I had a good time finally playing a bit. I've been coming off the bench for small runs of points, tours through the backrow, etc... but haven't really had the chance to establish a real rhythm with the team, so it was really nice to get a chance to run my offense and settle into the match a little bit. In any case, it was exciting and even though we were supposed to beat this team, it still feels good to have had some influence on the match.

Now, we look to a much harder opponent. Tomorrow we leave for Friedrichshafen knowing that we're going to have to play a real good match if we want to come away with anything. Bet and Win has us as 11 to 1 underdogs so apparently our second place doesn't buy us very much respect...

#2 With a Bullet

We’re several weeks into the main schedule now and everything is working out fairly well. At the moment we’re sitting number two tied with a couple of other teams. Partly because we have played more games, partly because we have had a fairly easy schedule so far and partly because we are playing pretty well and have won some important matches.

Our biggest win this year was clearly the 3-0 thrashing that we gave Moers in their home gym. Coming into the match they were heavily favored (I’m not sure exactly why, looking at their team and comparing to ours they are not particularly impressive) and had won against Unterhaching and SCC Berlin, two teams that are also top teams in the Bundesliga. Two things about Moers, they set the ball higher than I have ever seen a team set, the tempo of their offense is not one of their advantages. Blocking against them is like when you are learning to ride a bike and you have training wheels and then you take them off and suddenly riding is so much better and faster. We blocked a lot of balls in this match, mostly because we had enough time to (as Jens likes to say) enjoy a cup of coffee from the time the ball left the setter’s hands until it reached the attacker. Second thing about Moers, their opposite, George Grozer is probably the best attacker I have ever played against and I can understand why they set him so high. He hit balls out of the back row diagonally inside our three meter line, easily. It was impressive to see, the kind of hits where all you can do is just clap and say good hit, we’ll try and get the next one. I heard that Moers signed him to a contract a couple of years ago and he didn’t know that the club had put in an option for themselves that gave them the opportunity to keep him for two more years. Which sucks I’m sure when you are getting offers from Italy… Anyways, that was a big match for us and it has given us confidence that we can hopefully use against the big time teams later in the schedule.

This week we’re headed to Berlin to play one of the lowest ranked teams in the league. They are basically the junior national team and they aren’t terrible, but they haven’t won a match yet even though they have been close. Another win and we go into Friedrichshafen next week in the number two spot…