Back to the Blog

I know it's been a while since I wrote, so without going into the major reasons why, I'll just get to the blogging.

We've had seven matches since I last wrote: one against Ikast in which I didn't play due to a broken finger, a cup match against Holte, three matches in the Nordic Club Championships, and then another two weekends ago against Marienlyst. I'll get to the match against Skovbakken in a different post...

The game against Ikast went smoothly, and wasn't too remarkable except for the second set when we came back from a big deficit thanks to Tue's great serving. The rest of the match was pretty comfortable for us and we won in straight sets.

We had a weekend off then a strech of four matches in four days, thanks to some "creative" scheduling by Holte. In the Cup, the home team proposes several days to play the match, one of which must be a weekend day. Their proposed weekend day for the cup match was while we were playing in the Nordic Club Championships, of which they were well aware. So we were left with a few week days to choose from, and we picked the day before the NCC started, which ended up working out well. I had just been cleared to play on Tuesday, so I was pretty excited to get back into action. So Thursday we ended up beating Holte 3-0, which was important because it set a good tone for the weekend and allowed us to conserve energy for the following three days.

After the Holte match we took the bus up to Odense and got settled into our hotel, the CabInn, a hotel that seemed straight out of Japan. It was comfortable and nice, but everything was tiny. The tournament was very well run by Marienlyst (and Fortuna), so thanks to them for a well-run weekend. Our first match was against the Icelandic team Throttur. They had some moments of good play and a solid opposite, but were a little out of their league on the weekend. We dropped a set to them, but won the rest comfortably.

Saturday we played the Swedish team Vingåkers, who had a couple North Americans on the team. They were a very similar team to Orkeljunga, whom we met in the preseason. Both teams had good ball control, with slower tempo offenses despite smaller hitters. It's only two teams that I've seen, but that's the impression I get about the Swedish league. At any rate, we beat them 3-0 and played well in the process, setting up the final match of the tournament against Marienlyst for the guaranteed spot at the finals. We had watched Marienlyst play an uninspiring match before us against the Icelanders, and felt good about our chances on Sunday.

Unfortunately Sunday turned out to be a blowout for Marienlyst. We played poorly and Marienlyst was on the top of their game, something we saw a few times last year. Our best serves were passed perfectly, our offense was out of sync, and Powell was on fire. They beat us easily in three and got their place in the finals. The three other teams to go are Falkenberg (Joakim's team and winner of the group that played in Copenhagen), Nyborg (winner of the group in Norway) and Middelfart (second place in the group in Norway). I'm disappointed we're not going since Gentofte and we had more difficult pools, and Middelfart could only finish 1-1 in the easiest group. But that's the nature of group play, and I'll still be rooting for them and Marienlyst when they go to Sweden.

The following week we had an opportunity to get some revenge on Marienlyst but let it slip through our hands. We came out of the gates quick and got out to early leads in the first three sets. We closed out the first two, but in the third with a lead of 20-17 we failed to finish. Marienlyst took the fourth set as well to force a deciding frame. They took an early lead of three or four points but we climbed back in to it and tied it up around 14. The match went to extra points, and we were forced each time to side out to keep the match going. We had a few chances on our own serve to earn a point but couldn't capitalize, and lost 20-18.

And actually this is a good lead in to something else that has been taking me away from blogging: a website that I've started. VolleyballTorrents.com is a site I've made for people to upload and download torrents of... you guessed it, volleyball! So far I've got about 15 matches on there, and I have 10 or so more torrents to put up. There are four categories each for men and women: Beach, Club, International, and College. You can't download without signing up (all you need is an email and I promise I'm not going to spam you or sell it or anything like that), but once you have you can browse the torrents and download, and (what I'd really like) start uploading your own matches. So all that was a really long lead in to this: if you want to see the Marienlyst - HIK match, you can download it from the site. So go check it out and start uploading your own stuff.