Free Time

When I'm not playing volleyball this is what I spend my time doing... Rescuing random cats out of the walls. Believe me, I'd like to know how it got in there also, but the real question is what one does with a face like that.

*GOLD*

As the remaining tendrils of cigar smoke and the boozy haze in my brain recede, I realize, I've had little time to reflect on what has been a unique season. Thinking back to August and the beginning, all sorts of thoughts come to mind. It's been bumpy along the way. From somersaults to a gimpy shoulder to coming back from the dead in Gentofte, somehow we managed to do what I can quite honestly say, didn't seem probable at many times, win the Danish Championship for a second time in a row.

Without getting too deep into everything, I just want to say that personally, I'm incredibly proud of the accomplishment. I'm proud of the way this team had a knack for winning close matches. I'm proud that we got better as the season went along. And I'm proud that we won a league that was more competitive than it has been in a long time. So, Fellas, congratulations on a fantastic season! It's been an absolute pleasure.

For me, it's kind of a weird feeling. I've been in Denmark for several years now, and I love it. But, and I know this isn't a big surprise, I've decided to sign a contract in Germany with Wuppertal for next season, so my time here is over (at least for the moment). I'm going to continue with the blog next season, so I hope some of you will keep reading, I don't know if there will be anything too interesting to report, but I guess we'll find out!

But now, it's time to get on a plane and find my way home for a little while. That means the blog is going to be off for a couple months, I might post every once in awhile if I feel like saying something or if I play in a couple AVP tournaments... But I doubt it. Laying around in the sun, on the beach, takes up a lot of time. I'll be back in the middle of June, possibly playing in one or two tournaments on the Fanta Tour, definitely hanging around and watching some, and generally enjoying the wonderful Danish summer.

Ses!

FINALS

There is little to report from last night's first final. The gym was set up, the fans were there, and the match was slightly disappointing. As has been reported, we won the match in fairly safe style, winning by at least four in each of the three sets. We played stable but not especially well and it was enough to win a match that had quite a few mistakes in it.

There were definitely some good things from our side. We played good defense, blocked pretty well and only gave up a couple runs of points. But all in all it was a workmanlike win for us that we'll take and head back home for Monday.

It feels good to have that first win in the bank, and the security of home court for the next two. We've played well in Marienlystcentret all year so we go home with confidence. No question the next match will be more intense, from both sides, hopefully we'll be the ones holding up the trophy after it is over!

After heart attack comes the finals...

I don't need to tell everyone all the same stuff that everyone else already has. The match was ridiculous and I'm still not positive that we won. I'm still waiting for someone to come to me and say that the match isn't over and that we need to go back to Copenhagen to play the rest of it. We essentially lost (down 24-21 with Jacob passing) and won (Toke blocking at 14-12) before actually winning the match. It was a great experience, one that I will remember for a long time, but I'm not entirely sure that I could take it if I had to do it again, say...tomorrow. Luckily, we're in the finals and we can now focus on getting ready for Friday.

I'm glad that we finally got to play a match where both teams could say afterward that they played at a high level. I'm sure it doesn't make up for losing, but with the way that Gentofte played yesterday, it has to take some of the sting out of it. When you perform the way you want to and your opponent does the same it is hard to be too down about losing. And obviously, there was very little that separated us from each other yesterday, one ball goes the other way and we're going back to Marienlyst to play again tomorrow.

As far as what happened after the match, I have mixed feelings. On one hand, things were intense and I have said before that I personally have no problem with trash talking. If you really think about it, yesterday's match was probably one of the best in a long time in Denmark, it was also one of the most "talkative" matches I have been a part of since being here. If nothing else, the talking contributed to the intensity of the volleyball. So, in that sense, I loved it.

On the other hand (And please remember this is just my feeling on the subject), in my mind, there is a certain art to trash talking. The people who are really good at it have a way of making it entertaining, funny, cool and effective. Rarely does it get personal and rarely does it have to do with anything more than the sport at hand. I mean otherwise, you're not really trash talking, you're just talking shit about someone to their face. And I think what got out of hand yesterday is that a lot of things were said that would NEVER be said off the court and to someone's face. From both sides.

Obviously there is no need to get physical about it, but let's just remember there is no need to keep talking after the match is over. And this isn't to sound like a "tough guy" but if you do persist on talking after the match then you have to also be willing to stand by what you say, it was intense and that meant that any number of reactions could have occurred. I didn't hear what was said, and I honestly don't know who started the whole thing, I'd imagine both sides are guilty, so let's just put it all behind us and stop taking everything so personally.

Hats off to Gentofte and to the crowd yesterday, thanks for making the match a classic. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened in a third and deciding match...

Team of the Year

By now it seems like everyone has a feeling one way or the other about the new team of the year voting. I’m no exception and I think it is fairly ridiculous. First though, let me just say that I think it reveals a larger problem in Danish volleyball: Namely, the tendency to change the way things work all the time, regardless of whether they work well or not. Since I’ve been in Denmark, I’ve played three different formats for the finals, I’ve seen the grundspil change, I’ve seen the team of the year voting change twice, etc… I admit, some of the changes have been positive (taking points from the grundspil over to the slutspil for example) but generally, it seems to just be change for change’s sake. I’ve also heard from a lot of people that there have been constant changes throughout the history of Danish volley. I do understand that change is necessary and that the DVBF is doing these things in the name of progress, but it just seems like overkill sometimes.

As for the new team of the year selection process, I’m fairly skeptical. For most of the same reasons as everyone else, who are these people on the committee? Have they seen any of us play? What was wrong with the old system, etc…

And while I agree that some players voted “tactically” or not seriously, the majority took it seriously. Who is to say that the new system isn’t going to be more political than the old? Now you have a small group of people deciding the outcome of the team, if only one or two have a stronger connection to one team or one player than another then you have a major problem. Say they haven’t seen two of the teams play this season? No matter how objective they want to be, they are naturally going to vote for what they know. I think that is a shame. Let’s look at the board: One person doesn’t even live in Denmark, so that’s interesting. A couple of the others, I admit, I don’t know who they are so they could have been at some of the games and I wouldn’t know. I know that at least two live in Copenhagen so they would have seen most of their games in Copenhagen, where most teams would be playing away.

I realize that the coaches are going to be making a lot of these decisions, with the nominations, etc… And the board will kind of be settling any disputes that come along, but to me that is backward. You’re giving the power to a select few instead of the masses. It’s kind of an oligarchic Greek step back in time, where we need Rome and the republic. I just think the old system worked well, had a few small flaws and satisfied everyone while the new system may work well, may have big flaws and leaves many people unsatisfied.

I think the people that get left off the list will have more to complain about this year than before. No one ever got edged out by someone’s joke vote, generally there were two or three legitimate candidates that got most of the votes and then there were a few dumb votes down the line. But, at least a player could see where he stood. If they missed by a couple of votes, they missed by a couple votes, not much to do about it, the votes weren’t there. Now, if you come in second, you have to wonder, who was it that didn’t vote for me? Did they see me play one bad game? Did they see the other guy play one good game? Did they see me play at all? I think in general the process is losing credibility by switching.

I can say personally, as a player, it felt good to have the other players in the league vote for me. I trust the people that I play against every day more than anyone else, they know who gives them the most problems during a match, they know about the little things that affect the outcome of the match that you can’t really pick up from the stands.

Who says that people voted tactically anyways? Coordinating votes as a team? Who are the teams that do this? I’ll happily state here in full view that if your team discussed this and coordinated your votes so that someone on your team made it, then you all are ridiculous people. You can have my player of the year award if it means that much to you. I have a hard time believing that this happens.

In the end, I think there is space for this committee, if it necessary. But I would like to see a system that takes everything into account. We could keep the committee and the coaches, and still have the players vote. Then we could assign a certain weight to each of the results. More information usually equals more accuracy and the players would still get to have a say. Simple.

Ok, enough about that, I’m not really in favor of the new system. But I love all of you on the committee! And the coaches too! I’m sure you’ll all make the right decisions for nominations…

I am actually glad that they brought back the “player of the year” category, that was always kind of a mystery that they stopped naming a best player. So, that is positive. Now they just have to start giving money again to the people who make the team, that was also nice.

I’m not so sure about the referee of the year category. I think that it probably should be recognized, but it would help if they would have told us about this earlier so I could have been thinking about it during the season. It’s fairly hard to think back and remember which referees were working each match, with the exception of some of the times I was unsatisfied. It’s kind of like you never really notice a really good ref, as it should be, so it is hard to remember the well refereed matches. But, I’m not voting, so I guess it doesn’t matter.

Last thing, I understand that the team of the year should be unveiled at the finals, and that is fine. But I definitely think that performances in the semi-finals and if possible, the first final match should be taken into account. I mean, those are important matches, I don’t see why they wouldn’t count towards the voting.

One of these days soon, I’ll write down who I would have voted for and why for this year. I was going to wait until after we voted, but since that isn’t happening, it doesn’t really matter.

Good luck to everyone this weekend!

No Time.

Reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” in the past week has been a kind of enlightening experience. The idea behind the book is that as humans, our unconscious has a much stronger effect on our everyday interactions than we realize. Most interestingly, he discusses “quick-splicing”, the idea that our sub-conscious makes quick decisions on our behalf before we really have a chance to think about something. Without going deeply into examples and studies from the book, he essentially theorizes that we are all the time making decisions and judgments that we don’t realize we are making. These decisions and judgments range from seemingly unimportant, understanding what someone means when they point to a painting on the wall, to profoundly significant, hiring a tall person instead of a short person because we respond to taller people in a more positive way. Gladwell states that we are all more racist/sexist/discriminative than we want to believe and that the idea behind the book is realizing this so that we can do something about changing it.

All of this has little to do with volleyball, but as I started thinking about the connection between our “quick-splicing” abilities and sports it became clear that sports are all about fast decision making. It is generally accepted that the best athletes, the ones who reach the highest levels, are the ones that can separate themselves out mentally. To me, “quick-splicing” plays a huge role in this when someone steps onto the court. If you ask a great player, in the middle of a match, why they decided to step two steps to the left in order to be in position for a dig, I don’t think they will be able to answer that easily. Of course they will say, the position of the block, the tendency of the hitter and other things all came together to help make the decision. But, I would argue that there is more to it than that. Our brain makes calculations all of the time, whether or not we are consciously telling it to, and those calculations play a major role in how we react to stressful situations like the middle of a rally on the volleyball court.

We’ve all experienced standing at the net, saying specifically that the opposing team’s setter is in the front row, and as soon as the play takes place the setter dumps the ball down on our side and no one on our team makes a move for the ball. How can something like this happen? We just said that we should be ready for it. Everyone heard that the setter was front row, but no one registered the information. I think a lot can be explained by understanding that our brain is thinking without us realizing it. When the play gets underway, our brain begins to run automatically, we have little or no time to think about what is happening, the things we do are decided by a new part of our brain.

What about beach volleyball? I think many of us have experienced having the other team make a short cut shot, a shot that in the moment, seems impossible to get to. So, we don’t run after it because we have already decided it isn’t reachable. Yet, we all know that in reality, if we did try as hard as possible to get to that ball, we would reach it a certain percentage of the time. It is this negative reaction, deciding that we can’t, that is the challenge for us as volleyball players. How do we overcome the bad “quick-splice” where our brain gives us poor information?

Through experience mainly. In the book, Gladwell references a company that trains body guards. The guards are forced to undergo several severely emotional tests in order to be able to eventually have better control over their body in these stressful situations. They must fight with rabid attack dogs, more than once, until they are able to deal with the situation in a calm and rational manner. They go into a dark house where they are shot with rubber bullets at different intervals, they can feel the bullets and the experience is just like being shot for real, until their body can cope with the shock of the situation. Eventually, they are able to function and maintain a normal level of decision making because of the heavy testing. I’m not recommending that a volleyball player go to these extremes, but if you want to break these bad habits, these bad quick-decisions your brain is making for you, you have to force yourself to go beyond your normal comfort zone.

The idea behind the book is incredibly interesting to me. I’m not positive there is any real connection between sports and Gladwell’s thoughts but I feel strongly somewhere in my brain that there is something there that athletes can use. And I guess there isn’t anything wrong with trusting my intuition.

Catch 3-2

Just a few quick notes on our final match of the regular season.

I didn't really know what to expect from a match that had no real meaning for either team. Of course you want to win, there is no doubt about that, but the way that both teams played yesterday was fairly unremarkable. The match itself wasn't pretty to look at and I think it was fairly obvious that everyone was kind of holding back a little bit. We ended up pulling it out 3-2 but it didn't seem like they were too upset on the other side of the net... One more week and things get interesting!

Number 1

Kind of out of nowhere, but with Middelfart losing last night, the slutspil is done. We finish first no matter what happens in Gentofte and we play them in the semi-finals starting next weekend. I was skeptical that Middelfart would lose again to HIK but clearly, they have their issues with the team from up north. I guess it will be interesting to see what happens in their semi-final as well, especially considering that HIK was the only team this year to have an overall winning record against Middelfart... I guess in the end it doesn't really matter who plays who, anyone can win.

Tomorrow's match is interesting to me because it means nothing whatsoever. Absolutely nothing. I don't know if I have ever played in that kind of match before, frankly, I don't know how to feel about it. I mean, we learn that it is important to win when we play sports, that wins and losses add up to eventually mean something overall. But in this case, our fate is decided, we have no role to play, winning is irrelevant and losing is irrelevant. One could make the case that it is a kind of test for the semi-finals, to see where both teams stand in comparison to each other, but that only really means something if both teams are trying their hardest to win. And I'm not sure that we both will be.

This subject gets debated quite a bit in the US, especially around NFL playoff time, because most of the time the best teams are guaranteed their position in the playoffs. People spend lots of time debating whether it is better to rest their starters and not "give anything away" for the playoffs or if it is better to just keep playing like they have all season. Can a team interrupt their rhythm by taking out all of their normal starters? Is it really important in volleyball to rest and be fresh for the playoffs? In our specific case, will Gentofte have a better read on our players if we play like we normally do this weekend? Will they be able to use that to their advantage when we play in the semis?

I personally think it doesn't really matter. There is plenty of tape out there from us playing this season, we've already played Gentofte three times, so I don't think there are a whole lot of surprises left, but who knows? I guess we'll see what happens tomorrow and figure it out from there.