2008 Olympic Gold Medalists

2008 Olympic Gold Medalists
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Monday, May 25, 2009

Huntington Beach

I hope everyone is having or had a great Memorial Day Weekend. It was a good one for Phil and I down in Huntington Beach. We won our 4th tourney of the year on the AVP Tour. The weather was great down at the beach and it is always great to be on a real beach rather than a man made one.

Tourney started at 9am on Friday morning for us. We played Pepe Delahoz and Scotty Lane in the first round. I think we won 18 and 13. Scotty was bombing jump serves and had a bunch of aces but we were steady enough to win the match. In our second round we played Larry Witt and Jose Loiola. Larry was bombing his jump serve and had at least 4 if not 5 aces. They probably served Phil 70% of the time. When he passed well he was pretty much automatic but they were scoring on aces and shanks. We ended up winning like 15 and 22-20.

On Saturday we played Ed Ratledge and Ryan Mariano. We played well and won 15 and 16 or so. Our next match we played Casey Patterson and Ty Loomis. They had upset Mayer and Nygaard and were playing well. We won 15 and 17 to advance to Sunday.

On Sunday we played John Hyden and Sean Scott. We started out well in both games and were able to maintain the lead pretty much the entire match. Not sure of the scores but mid teens I think. In the finals we played Rosy and Jake for the umpteenth time and 3rd time this year. The first game was back and forth. Lots of points scored by both teams. They had the upper hand as they scored to make it 20-19 them. We sided out though and Phil had a monster block on Jake to go up one and then we scored another point to win 22-20. In the second game we jumped out to a big lead but they came back to tie the game up at 13 all. At 14 all we scored 4 or 5 points in a row and won 21-17. The last several points were crazy rallies where Rosy and I were trading off insane digs. Full sprawling on shots and scooping bombs. Had a lot of fun as it seemed like it was more of a defensive minded game then a serve and block game. Next stop in Atlanta.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Todd nice win in huntington. You looked good in the match I saw vs sean/john on AVPTV. Mixing up your shots nicely, and though it hurts to say, leaving Hyden in no man's land more than once. Nice job you both looked nice and crisp. I think it's about time you win next week and break the Atlanta dry spell. Good luck, happy Memorial Day and bring your rain shell.

Jeff

Unknown said...

Happy Memorial Day to you too! Congratulations on another win. You keep this up and I think the decision for 2012 will be easy for you to make.

Garret

Todd Rogers said...

Jeff- Thanks. Felt pretty good in that match. Are you serious with the rain? Hoping to miss that but I will check weather.com.

Garret- The decision really isn't based on wins or losses as much as it is desire to travel ect... with family at home.

Thanks,

Todd

Anonymous said...

http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071113085831AALLFdi&vm=r&vm=r

Margo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Todd,

Who is the announcer guy and what's his volleyball background? I guess the AVP thinks that the television broadcast is more important than the crowd in the stadium. He's not bad, but us as fans just know the guy.

That was the first time that I've seen you guys go after Jake instead of Rosie. Phil took away a lot of that high hit of Jake's. Rosie blew his chance with you guys at 20-19. From the stands it looked like your hit was right at him and not that hard.

Steve

UmassJSP said...

I just caught the Houston Final on the Versus channel. The one chick on the winning team that beat EY needs to go up one size on the bottoms to cover up the back yard. Looked like a nice facility there in Texas. Todd and Phil are taking the other teams out of their games and Phil is in their heads on every shot. I wonder if any teams study the tapes from the olympics where a couple teams had some small success against our World Champs. One other observation is does anyone know if the AVP requires the body waxing? I dont remember a real fur coat on a player since Aykatubby. No one in sports will ever have more body hair than wrestling icon George "The Animal" Steele. Have a great week everyone and congrats to Todd and Phil for the wins and going over $1 million in winnings....SUPER. Scott from Cape Cod

Anonymous said...

call me crazy, but if i just had my first kid, and was making pretty good finishes on the AVP: the last thing I would do is fly to S Korea when N Korea has just completed its underground Nuclear testing and is threatening a Naval conflict.

Anonymous said...

todd, looks like you will get into some rain on your flight into atlanta, and friday through sunday looks really nice and sunny, and no where near as HOT as in the past 3 years; i plan to try to catch up with you on saturday...alan beverly/birmingham, al

p.s; for scott from the cape; april ross has been a little "cheeky" for a couple of years and i don't know who handles that either.

Anonymous said...

Alan are you headed to Atlanta?
Let me know if you want to meet up, I'm trying to drive in Friday pm and probably leave Sunday pm

Jeff

Anonymous said...

Hey U-Mass,
Great off-color comments as you keep it real. The AVP requiring body waxes??? Maybe... as long as those ingrained CROCS tattoos are affected!
And we can all thank FIVB (and AVP for following the lead) of skimpy bikini bottoms that were limited by official rules. Gone are the days of tankinis. Blech!

Steve-O

Anonymous said...

Anonymous. If you are referring to Casey I think the men's FIVB is in Poland, the woman's is in Seoul

Jeff

Todd Rogers said...

Margo- Thanks. Sounds like you did learn something in school! :)

Steve- The announcer in Huntington was Jim Arico who used to share duties with Sam Lagana as the announcer on the AVP Tour. This was way back when I was barely 20 years old. He is Geeter's mentor and good friend. Occasionally he has come out and helped Geeter at So. Cal events. Now that Geeter is doing more and more TV stuff the AVP needs an announcer. I personally think Jim is great as he remembers more history than most of the players combined. Sadly, most of the players don't know any history. Rosie's Raiders were calling Jim out and I know that really pissed Geeter off. Also, I would say that we have gone after Jake more this year and last than Rosie. Last year Rosie really elevated his sideout game.

Scott- As someone posted that was April Ross. I used to tease K Walsh about how she needs to stop with the "crack" thing. I think she started it off and being the trend setter she is, everyone else just followed along. Not sure about the waxing thing. For the longest time you could count the hairs on my chest. Now I think I might be in triple digits! Maybe if I play for another 10 or 15 years I will have a fur coat on my chest but don't count on either of those things happening.

Anonymous- Casey is in Poland not S. Korea. April and Jen are in S. Korea and Jake and Rosy are in Poland too. All of them missing Atlanta this weekend. I think too each their own. If it were me, I would leave it up to the wife and I am pretty sure my wife would say beat it. All I remember for the first 3 months of both my kids lives was getting up and handing the kid to Mel as they wanted nothing to do with me.

Alan and Jeff- Look forward to seeing you in ATL.

Todd

Denise said...

Hi Todd! I just thought I'd stop by and say hello. See you in Hermosa and Manhattan Beach! Safe travels and say hi to the family for me!

Anonymous said...

Todd, I have read through most of the blog to make sure I don't double up on these questions and found nothing on it. Do you test how high you touch and how often? Is that number something you would share? Also was watching old school stuff. How well do you think Steffes would have done on the small court? thanks

Todd Rogers said...

Hi Denise. :)

Anonymous- I have not done the vert. test since college. I really don't care. I know I can jump well when I need too. I think Steffes would have been a great player on any court in any era.

Todd

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