Thursday night our coaches decided to give us the night off practice so we could instead drive about 1.5 hours to Friedrichshafen to watch a European Cup Games between VfB and Iskra Odintsovo from Russia. A quick definition of European Cup is the champions of all the European leagues playing against each other during their club seasons for the Euro Cup. It's a pretty big even throughout Europe, as this game was broadcast live on Europsort!
We arrived at the gym 30 minutes before game time because our assistant coach really wanted to see hitting warm up. He was like a kid in a candy store! He had the biggest smile ever on his face and would get all excited when the player had an amazing hit. I would define amazing as hitting the ball inside the attack line (3 meters) for these players. They made it look too easy leading Michele and I to discuss how men’s volleyball players have become too big and athletic therefore raising of the height of the net should occur. This could create more rallies and allow both blockers and defenders to have a chance to stop the attacker.
After hitting warm up we took our seats in the 3rd row on the home team’s side.....I have never sat so close for a volleyball match.
It was neat because you could see all the hand signals from the setter, and minor movements and adjustments the players made as the ball game to them. I was pretty pumped to be so up close to the game!
As for the game, Iskra Odintsovo boasts one of the best players in the world Giba from Brazil. He was FIVB player for the year in 2007 and was the FIVB World Championships MVP in 2006. He was also a member of the Silver medal Brazilian team at the 2008 Olympics, basically he’s pretty unreal. He also overcame leukemia as a child and a drug suspension in 2002 for testing positive for marijuana.
Giba in Action
He was amazing to watch play. When he would attack he would jump look directly down on the blockers because he had jumped higher than them and hit the ball off their hands and out of bounds. It was as if time slowed down when he attacked. I can only imagine being able to do that! He was so calm and collected as a player....even after a bad play he would gather his team mates together and rally them for the next play. I’m not sure how he would do that being that he was the only player on the team that didn’t speak Russian; but whatever he did seemed to work and his team almost always rebounded from an error.
As for the actual game Iskra Odintsovo won 3-1, something that was expected to happen. The won a first tight game as the home team came out fighting with a lot of passion in front of a crowd around 3500. However they were not able to maintain that fight and got smoked 25-16 in the second game. I was worried that the match was going to be over in 50 minutes, but luckily VfB came out and won game 3, 25-22 forcing a 4th set where the Russian club team calmly disposed of the home team 25-22. Besides the large amount of service errors the match included some huge blocks by either team, some unbelievable block coverage and even a couple of rallies that were longer than 10 seconds. When these players did make digs it allowed for some very entertaining volleyball! I would definitely consider going to another leg of Euro Cup later on in the season if our schedule allows for it!!
Be sure to read both posts from today. Sorry for doing 2 at once, but the lack of internet doesn't always allow me to post whenever I write them! Tschus.
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