A Sword for the Fantasy Buff

For those of you that don't know, my favorite genre of books to read is Fantasy/Adventure. Currently I am re-reading Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber. (Read it when I was about 12 or so.) Bought the omnibus edition which is all 10 books put into one massive tome! Got about 70 more pages to go out of the more than 1200 in the omnibus. Therefore, it is fitting that Phil and I won a sword in Norway. Maybe I should take up sword play as a hobby in the offseason.

The sword really was the driving force behind our victory. Both Phil and I talked a lot about winning the sword. Last year we saw Fabio with his sword and were quite jealous. They are real swords. Not sharpened thank goodness. Although the tip of the sword is very sharp and could mess someone up with a good thrust. The lady who gave it to me just about skewered me through the eye with it when we were on the podium.

The tourney itself was as always one of the best on the FIVB tour. The weather is a bit sketchy but that is Norway for ya. The fans here love there beach volleyball and are very knowleadgeble about the sport. They support their Norwegian teams with passion but also support other teams once the Norwegians are out of the tourney. They are loud and have fun but are never negative like some countries fans that chant ahole when you are about to serve.

In our pool we played the 32nd ranked Norwegian team on Thursday morning. They are a young team that received the Wild Card and had never been in the main draw. We pretty much whooped up on them winning 10 and 11. They are physically impressive with both of them being tall and physical but extremely raw. In our second game we played the top Italian team and beat them in two 13 and 15 or so. Ricardo Lione was playing with a heavy heart as his father had just passed away the day before but played well nonetheless.

On Friday we had only one game and it was to see who would win the pool. We played the Swiss team of Laciga and Schnyder. We beat them in 3 games. The first game was not close as we won 21-14. They then switched tactics and served me jump float serves instead of trying to just bomb their jump serves. It worked. We were in a battle the whole second game. We were up 20-19 when Phil touched a line shot and set me a good set. I tried to be aggressive and bang it but got stuffed. I proceeded to get stuffed on the next 2 balls and we had to go to game 3. In game 3 I mixed it up well and we won 15-11 or 12 to win our pool and get the bye in the first round of playoffs.

Saturday the playoffs started. We had the bye as I mentioned in the last paragraph and our first game was not until 2pm. The weather had been surprisingly good the last several days and Saturday was no exception. It wasn't really warm, about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but there was no rain and the wind was very slight. In our first match we played the Japanese team of Shiratori and Asahi. They had beaten a Norwegian team to get to that point and it was a big victory for them. They are now tied with the Canadiens for 25th in the Olympic standings and both teams are only 40 points behind the 2nd Chinese team to get into the Olympics. We beat them 14 and 17 and were in control for the majority of the match. In our second match we played the first Chinese team. They are trying to get into the top 6 for Olympic points as that would put them as the first seed. If they are 7 or below they become the 6th seed in the Olympics. I started off slow on some tough jump serves by Tiny but Phil played really well especially from the service line. He and Tiny were both bombing their serves and became a story of who would serve better to win the match. Phil won over Tiny and we won 16 and 19 scoring a real point on an out hit by the right sider to win the match.

On Sunday the weather took a turn for the worse. Woke up to rain and wind and it wasn't looking good. It did slow down however and there was very little rain while we were playing. It was kind of windy but inside the stadium court it was much reduced because of the blockage by the stands. We played the 2nd Dutch team in the semis. It was their first semi ever but they didn't play like it. The first game was a good game going back and forth. We pulled it out by a few in the end though. The second game we were the beneficiaries of some no touch calls on Phil and won pretty easily. Congrats to the Dutch on their best finish ever. This team keeps getting better and better and could be a real threat come Beijing.

In the finals we played Germany's Reckerman and Urbatzka. It was the third week in a row that we played them in the playoffs. The last two we beat them to give them a 5th and 9th respectively. They played really well in the first game and really should have won that game. They were up 18-14 serving. We sided out and then scored two points to get it back to 17-18. They sided out but so did we and we scored another point to even it up. They had one set point at 20-19 but we sided out and took the next point to go up the set point. It took us 8 more set points but Phil got a block to seal the victory at 29-27. The second game we were always a little bit ahead of them. We would very between 1 and 3 points ahead and then they would always bring it back to a 1 point difference. At the end it was 15-14 us. We sided out and then went on a mini run with Phil making a couple of big blocks. It ended on Urbatzka's angle bang being an inch out and we were the winners of some sweet swords!