Hello from beautiful Myslowice Poland. It actually is really nice here. In truth, it wasn't what I expected. It is essentially forest, rivers, lakes all around. Very pretty and scenic. Felt like they built a volleyball court in the middle of the forest.
The weather was calling for major rain everyday but somehow we pretty much escaped it. On Wednesday, the qualifier day, there was some light rain midday. Phil and I did our plyo workout in the morning and just beat the rain. Thursday through Saturday were nice. High clouds with some sun but no rain. Today it was nice in the morning and then for the awarding ceremonies it rained fairly lightly but then stopped after 15 minutes or so. Pretty good considering that the weather man was calling for 60%- 90% rain on almost every day.
The tourney went well for us as we won and I am actually blogging the same day as we won, not two weeks after the fact. Miracle in and of itself! On Thursday we won two games against a junior polish team that got a wild card and Casey and Brad. Always hate to play fellow Americans on this tour. It seemed like this tourney all the Americans and Brasilians were playing one another. Emanuel and Alison lost first round and fought all the way back to take 4th place. In their wake they left a lot of good teams. Jake and Rosy lost to Matt and Nick to take a 17th. Matt and Nick then lost to Emanuel and Alison who had just beaten Pedro and Harley. We beat Benjamin and Bruno in our first game Friday and then Alison and Emanuel beat them too. Just seemed like the brackets all aligned to where we would play one another.
In the semis of the winners we lost to Spain. They pretty much served us off the court. They sided out well and bombed their jumpers and it worked as we lost in 3 games. On Saturday we played the best Polish team and had a battle. We prevailed in 2 tight ones much to the dissapointment of the crowd. Then we beat Jonas and Julius from Germany in 3 games of which none were close.
Finally, today we got revenge on Spain and beat them in the finals pretty good. They didn't serve as well as the previous time we played them and Phil served really good. Nice to get on that long flight tomorrow with a win under our belts.
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4 comments:
Thanks for the updates from "The Continent" Todd. I always enjoy reading about your adventures from around the World. You are traveling thousands of miles and I dont even feel like driving down to Walmart to get a new box of razor blades! I have been watching the re-runs on ESPN Classic of the AVP tourneys from the late 80's and early 90's and they have made me really miss the old AVP tour. I am sure you guys wish you could make a nice living on a domestic tour rather than going global like Tennis does. Thanks to you and Phil for representing the USA with class and pride. Both of you are great ambassadors. Congrats on another tourney win and make sure you pump that foreign money back into the US Economy. Scott from Cape Cod, Mass
P.S. - Celtics vs Lakers AGAIN...ahould be epic!
Congrats on the win in Poland. From watching replays on Universal Sports it looked like you were serving Brink in the first game of the semi-final, then switched to Reckermann for games two and three. Was that the strategy.
It almost looks like Phil does better against tall hitters (Reckermann, Allison, etc.) than he does the smaller guys.
Maybe it's my imagination. Anyway, welcome back to the USA, and good luck the rest of the year.
I just watched the 1994 Santa Cruz Cuervo Gold Crown Final on my DVR. ESPN has been re-running these matches and if you are a Beach VB fan and you arent taping these you are insane. In this installment Karch and Kent win $100,000 and their SIXTH straight Cuervo event over Loiola and Anjinho. Regulation court, sideout scoring and no time clock (reliance on endurance)....as the English soccer commentators say "delicious". The sport now with the FIVB rules is a completely different animal so the two eras MUST be looked at separately.
Obviously you have to say Todd and Phil are the greatest team of the new rules era. A perfect talent set for the current game configuration of rallying scoring, smaller court size and emphasis on serving/blocking. For the previous era I am really torn between Karch/Kent vs Stoklos/Smith for the greatest team. And then deciding how teams from the different eras would do if the rules were swapped is a completely different tangent. If both teams were in their primes I would have to say that Karch and Kent are the greatest team under the old rules of all time. They could both do it all and I think they would wear Stoklos down at the net. Of course Karch is like Magic or Bird in that he could make everyone he played with better like Frohoff and AJ.
I know I proposed this before but why cant the AVP domestic tour designate one tournament a year to be played under the old rules with the regulation court, AVP Top Flite ball, sideout scoring to 15 and no time clock? I will write to Commissioner Dodd. By the way I met Commissioner Dodd circa 1992 in a store on Cape Cod where he was signing autographs before a tourney. He kept asking me if I brought my wife or girlfriend so he could meet her. Nutty guy.
Enjoy the holiday everyone and have a great Summer....even though it seems like the world is falling apart with wars, oil spills, 401Ks in the toilet and the Jonas Brothers as Americas #1 band we must still be relentlessly positive and have a good time....Scott from Cape Cod, Mass
I don't know why I found the blog so late :/ Anyway..
Congratulations, I was there almost every day, and watched almost every your game despite I'm polish and I should support my national team but my prior was to watch all your games.
I remeber funny moment when the Polish Woman Referee whistled your set and Phil said to her: " You're terible, you are really bad.."
I think your sets are in 95% very clean and fast.
BTW
Thanks for common photo and I hope to see you in Stare Jablonki this summer.
Greets..
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