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Some Hard Earned Wins
June 15, 2011 | By Rich
We are home from Beijing resting up and training with our coach, Mark Heese, for a week before we head off to Norway for our next grand slam tournament. Since my last entry we have played two tournaments, Prague and Beijing. Both results showed that we are maturing as a team and building confidence incrementally. The qualifier in Prague was very demanding. We had to win three matches in one day in order to advance to the main draw. One fairly easy match in the morning and two very gutsy performances in the afternoon, one of which went to a third set, against teams that have already been in the main draw this year gave us our first main draw result of the year. It was a very satisfying feeling, no doubt! Our main draw match up had us up against Brazil’s top team of Ricardo-Marcio the next morning and we had our chances to take the match at 17-17 and 17-16 in each respective set but fell short at the end. Falling into the losers bracket we were disappointed in our loss to Spain that pushed us out of the tournament.
We came home and started to prepare for Beijing, the first Grand Slam event of 2011. Arriving early was important in order to deal with the 12 hour time change. We had 5 days in the Chinese capital to get used to the heat, the time zone and to play a few matches against other teams that arived early. The night before the qualifier we learned that in order to qualify for the main draw, we would need to beat one fairly regular main draw team and then another team that has been a solid main draw team for about three years including one podium finish. We were excited!!
The next morning we showed up ready to compete and dominated our Swiss opponents. In the afternoon under the scorching Beijing heat we battled a hungry and expectant French team and took the first set 21-19. The second set went back and forth all the way up to 30-30 when Josh dug a line shot off my block with precision up to the net where I was able to turn and spike it down to give us a 31-30. The next play was the winner with my line block on the right sider. Main Draw Grand Slam!!!
Our work begins again tomorrow…
The next day we found ourselves in a pool (Grand Slams organize the main draw teams into 8 pools of 4 teams) with the same Brazilian team that we drew in Prague, Latvia who has been on the podium in the last year and the top Swiss team who finished Beijing on the podium. We were unable to beat any of our opponents during the course of the next two days and had to settle for knock-off shopping at the Beijing market.
Like every team, we have had some ups and downs over the past month. The important piece for us to pay attention to is the fact that we are slowly moving further into the tournaments and in the direction of better and better results.
Untill now we have played in 4 tournaments. In succession, our results have been; 41st, 33rd, 25th, and 25th in a Grand Slam.
Next is Norway.
Lets pack our viking attitude with us on this journey…
Take care and look for me again.
