volleyball

Here in Croatia, as in many of the countries with professional volleyball they have the Championship and the countrie's Cup series. The Championship is basically a normal season, goes from September to April. You play every team home and away, one in the first half of season and then again in the second half of season. For the Cup you play one of the teams in the league twice in a row, once home and once away, the winner of these games advance to the next round and play the next team that won home and away.The Cup ends in Decemeber. So by the end of season you could have won the Cup in December and the Championship in April. As of right now our team is in 1st place in the Championship and we are still in the Croatian Cup and we play the semifinals Dec 27th.
There is also the European Cup. That is when you play other teams from other countries and it is just like the Cup here in Croatia, you play one game home and then one game away. The winners advance to the next round and team. You may be thinking what happens if one team wins at home and then they lose away. Well if the series is tied 1-1 there is a golden set, one set to 15 and the team that wins the golden set moves on.
So for our European Cup game we drew a team from Russia. This team from Russia has a 4 million dollar budget. One of the top teams in the Russian league. They were one of the tallest teams we have faced. And there is USA National Team middle blocker Foulake on the team. This team is a high calibar team, obviously.
We played them at home first. From the practice the night before to the warm ups the next day before the game we knew they were all business. You can tell by the way they acted and warm upped that they were a disciplined team and good at what they did. Even though we knew we were the underdogs and no one expected us to win we went into the game with confidence and energy. Besides this is what we were waiting for to play a team with some tough competition and really see how we can play as a team.
We were so pumped for the game and it was the biggest crowd we had so far at one of our games. Before our first serve of the game the crowd was clapping in unision to get us going. It was so awesome to see and hear because that was the first time they had ever done that. Of course they cheered during the game after points or great plays but not before the first serve. It was just a good atmosphere all the way around.
The first set was one of our best sets that we have played. I think we surprised the Russian team with how well we could play. We went after them strong with our serve which gave us a chance to have a strong attack. We ended up taking the first set from them! It was so exciting! The next three sets we lost. They served much tougher and their block was huge. But we never gave up and we fought all the way till the end. We lost 1-3 but everyone was very happy with the way we played. We recieved a compliment from someone saying that it was good to see how much heart this team has because never before did thhey have this, in past they would have given up but they were proud of how we played.
It is so rewarding to hear that from the fans and also gain some fans from that game. It was awesome to play with such a high level team and just to play some good volleyball. I love this sport!!!
After the game we were all on such a high from the game and the energy from everyone. It was also our setter Kiki's and our libero Mickey's birthdays. So after the game in the locker were 2 champagne bottles ready to be popped open in celebration of the game and for the birthday girls!




me and the birthday girl Mickey