Lucky Losers in Kristiansand, Norway

I am a few weeks behind due to lack of access to the internet so I will review some of our recent successes and travels in the next post, but this one will be dedicated to our "Lucky Loser" draw in the Kristansand FIVB Open.  

Firstly, to those of you who don't know about the "Lucky Loser", it is a draw that occurs between the two highest ranked losing teams at the end of the qualification tournament to fill in a main draw spot caused by a late withdrawl from a pre-qualified team.  

We were blessed enough to have a few teams withdraw late from the event here as we lost a tight game to Mexico in the last round of the qualifier. 

Our first game was against a Swedish team who didn't have many points.  We were ranked 5th in the qualification tournament which lined us up to play two rounds against teams with fewer points than us.  The Swedes didn't have much experience at the international level but were good athletes.  It was a bit windy on the exterior court in the bay so we were able to capitalize on our superior ball control and patience.  We didn't play our top game and it worked best for us as we got the win and the Mexican team scouting us didn't get much of a report! 

Our second match featured a battle against a Mexican team who is very strong.  They took some time off at the end of last year and the start of this year so they had considerably fewer points than their skills indicated.  We started the match with crisp sideouts and made a few points here and there on both Mexican players but wound up being down 18-17 after a heavy rally. We sided out a few more times and wound up stealing the advantage back at 20-19. Unfortunately we weren't able to hold onto our sideout composure and lost the match 23-21.  We had been so strong throughout the beginning of the match but when it came time to push for the win, we over thought the situation and wound up changing what was working for us in the first place. 

In the second set we immediately went down 3-1 and couldn't bring the score back to even over the rest of the set.  We went down 9-5 and they held us at that scoring distance for the rest of the match.  We wound up tightening our playing style and making a few more tentative errors, errors we told ourselves we wouldn't make since our team excels with big serves, spikes and blocks.  The Mexicans fought hard and earned the second set Victory after many great rallies and digs.  We are still trying to figure out what went wrong and how they beat us but that is a lot tougher when your camera ran out of batteries and didn't record the game!

With this loss in the last round, we were in solid contention for the "Lucky Loser" draw at the Men's Technical Meeting. We showed up and our good friend Marcio (08 Olympic Silver Medalist) said he would sit in the front to specifically draw our name for us out of the bowl! We trusted him and had faith we were going to be chosen and sure enough, we were the first team picked! There were three spots available for lucky losers so we had a maximum of 3 draws to receive main draw status.  Marcio chose our names after grabbing one and thinking it wasn't the right slip! He pulled through for us and we are now preparing for tomorrow first round match against the 3rd ranked team in the event.  This top ranked team is the first Russian team and we look forward to implementing a solid game plan to post an upset.  

Thanks for all the best wishes from home and I will definitely be typing out my last few weeks once we are finished with the main draw here in our second Norwegian FIVB stop.

Cheers,

Martin 

Been a while but going strong

It has been 2 weeks since my last post and I apologize for my tardiness!! Unfortunately internet has not been accessible in both Marseilles, France and Klagenfurt, Austria as the internet in the hotels crashed due to so many players and refs getting into it.

These last two weeks have taken a turn to the positive and I will take you through a light summary of my recent travels and games.

To start off, we landed in Marseilles a few days early after our unfortunate defeat in Moscow. We landed in Marseille on Friday with intentions to train the entire weekend prior to the FIVB Grand Slam there.  Sadly for us, when we got to the courts on Saturday morning, the wind was about 60 km/h! Absolutely silly conditions for volleyball but we managed to play a little competitive game between the two of us and then a no jumping game against Venezuela.  On Sunday the wind died a bit but we decided to train in a private facility on a beach closer to down town called "Catalans" with the brazilian duo of Marcio and Fabio (08 Olympic Silver medalists). We had a mildly frustrating hit with them due to swirling wind but we dealt with it and competed. We continued to train Monday and Tuesday and beat a few high seeded teams as we prepared for Wednesdays qualifier. Wednesday came around and we received a BYE into the main draw as our seed was high and many teams pulled out!!! What a great feeling that was to be directly in without the stress of a single elimination qualification match! Unfortunately that dream was short lived as they were testing a new format for the event which was a single elimination playoff format with the top 16 teams having a BYE in the first round.  

Our first match was scheduled for 7 PM Thursday against an Austrian team but due to high winds, the tournament was delayed 6 hours and our game was bumped to Friday! Excellent, another free night at the hotel and another day to rest and prepare to deliver a beat down. Friday was also postponed and over the span of the day we made 5 trips back and forth between the venue and the hotel as each hour game play was delayed due to high gusty winds. Finally we played at 6 and we made use of our opponents dismay for the stormy yet sunny conditions.  I made a commitment to go back to playing with heart and emotion and through that decision, I released all kinds of energy in my game.  We wound up beating the Austrians in straight convincing sets as we served aces, blocked and dug our way to our first official game victory!

We dominated in every way and I looked forward to bringing that same attitude to our following match.  

Thus far in my career I haven't played any top 10 teams. In Marseille my first change to upset a top seed came along with our draw being against legends Ricardo/Emanuel.  The winningest team in beach volleyball history is no dream draw but where else would we get to play these guys in tough conditions to increase our chances of winning? Pumped for the match, we came in and all of a sudden found ourselves down 11-3.  Not a great start but we chipped away and didn't give up, losing the first set 21-16. In the second set we earned more points and steadied our sideout play but our 11-10 switch in our favor turned into a losing 16-19 switch.  We lost that set 21-17 but we beat ourselves.  They didn't do anything special, we just forced ourselves out of the game.  A disappointing loss but an easy one to come to terms with.  

The Marseilles FIVB Grand Slam is amazing for night life and the 2009 edition was crazy good. A bunch of athletes stayed and shoot their tail feathers on the dance floor that weekend and I took many notes of their setup as bringing their party layout at the venue would be unreal on the west cost of Canada!

We left Marseilles with renewed confidence and a more settling feeling as we both played like we knew we could. Klagenfurt, Austria was our Sunday destination; one of my favorite events in the world!!