Volleyball Update 1

Greetings volleyball fans!

Well, things are starting to look up here in Bühl! Our record is now 2-2 and our last match was very successful!

Last weekend, we played a four set match against Freiburg at home. I was fighting a pretty nasty cold and had a fever on Wednesday and Thursday night, but felt okay at training on Friday. However, on Saturday, I took some cold medicine and the first set was easily the worst set of volleyball that I have ever played. We were playing reasonably well and the match was tied at 12-12, and then they went on a serving run. Pretty much the scenario was, serve a jump floater at me or Edu, we would pass a ball low and off the net, Hannes would set a ball outside, we would hit it out of bounds. I was actually removed from serve receive for two points. This was the first time in my volleyball career that I have ever been pulled from passing. We lost the first set very badly 25-16. But, I noticed that I was doing some things technically poorly and decided to be patient, keep my confidence and slowly fix my technical issues as I played myself into the match. I was passing jump serves perfectly, but for some reason, I was having problems moving my feet to get behind the ball and pass float serves.

By the second set, Freiburg changedtheirr serving strategy so only one guy was spin serving. I was able to move further back so I could receive the ball and improve in the second set, and by the 3rd set I was nails. Fortunately for us, after an awfull first set, my teammates began to fight back and we caught fire in the second set. We won sets 2, 3, and 4 convincingly (25-20, 25-18, 25-22). Sean Kendal put on a hitting clinic in set two (7 kills on 8 attempts), we welcomed my roommate Matty Bajkov to the starting line-up, and our newest addition Dante Di Ponio ably subbed in and played well. We are .500!

After the match we had a bunch of friends come to our apartment. There were fifteen people jammed in our common room and on the balcony. I brought out the guitar and started singing a song that I recently wrote about how my roommate Matty has no game and how all the ladies just want to hold his hand and share "Best Friends Forever" necklaces with him. It was decided shortly after that we should leave our apartment and go to our friend Bernard's place. He has a large apartment with two great features: 1. a full bar 2. no enraged neighbors.

I sat in Bernard's living room and hung back playing requests as the others attacked his in-room minibar. Later that night, Mattydisappearedd. We decided to go back to the apartment in hopes that he was there. He wasn't. Just as we were about to send out a search party, he showed up at the front door with no shoes, covered in mud from sock to knee. He walked in and I asked, "Matty, where are your shoes?" He replied... "I don't know...Butt for some reason I have a bunch of dirt in my pockets!" To be perfectly honest, we may never find out were his shoes were left. We will never know exactly what Family Circus-esqu route he took to come back to the apartment. But we will always have the video footage that I took when I was interviewing him about his adventure that night. Thank God for Camcorders!