News!!!

Hello All!

So there is lots of news to report. But my recent hiatus has been due to a sudden loss of internet access. We will start from the beginning:

First, our club decided to part ways with our coach. It has been difficult for me personally because he is the primary reason why I am here in Buhl in the first place. He convinced the Club President, Georgios that the club needed a libero and that I should be the guy. Henry and I worked together hard over the past year and a half to bring our incredibly diverse team together and we won a championship in the Regionaliga last season to move up to the 2. Bundesliga. This also meant that we lost a roommate (and in so doing, lost our internet and telephone connection).

Second, we have received a new coach. His name is Diego Ronconi and he has been a head coach in the German 2nd League for over 9 years (The bulk of which was in Freiburg). Earlier this season he was coaching a team in our league, Weisbaden, but the club was having financial difficulties and lost their primary sponsor. So they were no longer able to pay him. Diego was looking for a job and Buhl was looking for a coach, and voila-he came to Buhl. Basically, since he has been here, we have revamped our blocking and defensive scheme, we are focusing on defense and celebration, and he has been teaching me a lot. All in all, it has been difficult, both personally and mentally. But, I think that it will pay off in the long run because he is a great fit for our ball club.

Two weeks ago we played our first matches with Diego as coach. We played two matches in the German Pokal. This is a regional championship tournament where every region has a local our goal was to play against Bayern Wuppertal (a First Division club). We played Offenburg in the first match and won pretty handily, 3-1. Unfortunately, we lost the second match to Konstanz. What was funny about the Pokal was that it was essentially a Regionaliga championship from last year. The top four teams were there: Ulm, Offenburg, Konstanz and us. This time we came in second. The bad news is that we won't get to play against a major 1st division club. The good news is that we have a weekend off in December now. We had to play two 5 set matches, back to back that weekend and it took a bit of a toll on us.

Last weekend we played a regular league match and beat Kriftel (near Frankfurt) 3-2. They were in first place in league before we played against them. It was a crazy match. The first set we won 25-14. It was the best set of volleyball we have ever played. Set 2, as is volleyball tradition, they came back and beat us (21-25). In set 3 we had trouble passing and Diego subbed Eduard, our top outside hitter and Sean, our top middle blocker were both subbed out. In set 4 we managed to get our mojo back and win 25-16 and we won the fifth set 15-12. It was a wonderful team victory and we are excited for our match this weekend against Shwieg (near Nuremburg) - the team who is now at the top of the table.

Volley goes on in Buhl!

More mediocre volley+Mercedes = Decent week

Greetings all! Well, unfortunately
there is not a whole lot to brag about this week. There has been a lot
of stuff going on with the club that has keeping me busy and at the
moment, we don't haveInternet or telephones in our apartment because our coach is moving to a new flat. I miss the Internet :(.

Yesterday we played against Durmersheim.
This is a Derby match. Basically, it is like the LA Dodgers and the SF
Giants rivalry... it is kind of a big deal. We had 700 fans in the Shwarzweldhalle, standing room only. There have never been so many fans in the hall
before and they were amazing. The only problem was that our team
was not. I am not really sure what happened, but the first set was
pretty much a blur. They would serve Vladimir float serves and bad
things would happen. We got dug, we got blocked, we served every other
ball out of bounds and pretty much we earned a 25-14 shellacking in the
first set. In the second set we showed a bit of fire and managed to
stay close until about 16-14, at which point we folded again losing
25-20. In the third we actually had a lead for the first time in the
match and won 25-21 after our block finally got on track and Vladimir
started passing towards the net. In the fourth set we were up 16-13 and
then had a brutal series of ace, hitting error, hitting error, hitting
error, side out, service error, hitting error, ball handling error,
that left us in 20-17 hole. We managed to tie it back up at 22-22, but
then made three more mistakes that basically handed them the match.
Brutal.

One highlight though was that this week Dante, Matty and I went with Philipp, Armin, and Karin Lorenz went to the Mercedes Benz museum in Stuttgart! Sooo cool! We started out the morning with some breakfast supplied out of the
back of Armin's new travel bus. Karin and Armin are two of our biggest
supporters and they have been at every match we have played in the last
two years. Simply amazing! All photos were taken by Dante, including
this one overlooking theMercedes 40's era speedsters. Apparently, Mercedes was KarlBenz's daughter and the company actually combined with Daimler Motor Company during the second world war to stay economically viable. The interesting thing was that Daimler and Benz never met during their
lifetimes, even though they lived fairly close to each other throughout
their lives... crazy. This is a picture of my new favorite car. It is a 1955 Mercedes "gull wing", and I know Christmas is coming up, so if anyone wants to make this Libero's year (hint hint).

Anyway, it is time for me to head off to bed, so that is all for now! I hope that Halloween was sweet for all!