Bronze in Italy

I have to get up in about 6 hours (445am) so this is going to be short. We took the bronze here in Roseto, Italy. It was a strange tourney as we did not play at all on Saturday.

We flew from Charleston last Sunday going to DC and then continuing into Rome. We got to Rome Monday morning and spent the day checking out the Colisium and some other ancient spots. Amazing and somewhere I would love to come back and spend some time seeing everything. Truly amazing what they were able to do back then.

The next morning we took the shuttle to Roseto which is almost 3 hours from Rome. Basically across the country. We did our usual workout stuff on Tuesday and Wend. and then started play on Thursday. In our first match we were pitted against the under 21 World Champions who are from Italy and received a Wild Card into the event. They are pretty good but have very little world tour experience. We won 14 and 17 or so. In our second match we played Heyer and Heuscher from Swissland. They had beat Mark and Stein in the first round and we exacted revenge for our compatriots winning 16 and 17.

On Friday we played the Russians and were aced around 6 or 7 times by the Bazooka but still managed to win 14 and 19. The guy can absolutely bring the gas as no one I have ever seen. He has the perfect armswing. I thought we were done for the day but it turns out we had to play the winners bracket semis. We played the very good Dutch team of Schuil and Nummedor. We played well and won 18 and 16. So it turns out that we have no game on Saturday. There are only losers bracket games. Phil and I set up a practice session with the Aussies to try and break a sweat and stay in the groove. It did not work.

Today we played two brasilian teams and lost the first and won the second. We lost to Harley and Pedro in 3 tight games. We played pretty poorly in my opinion with the exception of at the service line. Both Phil and I were ripping our jumpserves and that is pretty much what won game 1 for us and kept us close in game 2. I think I had 3 aces in a row in game 3 but we could not sustain the momentum. I was siding out poorly and digging not so good and Phil had 1 block in total for that match. We were off and they were fired up and played well. Went on to win the tourney at any rate.

In the bronze medal match we played Ricardo and Emannuel in a very uninspired match by both teams. Such a tough match to play. We won in 2 but both games were battles. Something like 21 and 24. Should have gone 3 games as we were down 24 to 23 and Phil set a ball that was pretty bad. The ref did not call it and I sided out. The brasilians were furious and rightfully so. The next two balls Phil got 2 of his 3 stuffs for the game but they were very timely and I would have to say the no call probably helped. All in all a nice week in Italy.