July 24, 2008

HEAD COACH Stephanie Dragan BLOG ENTRY

Today we had our first match in the Gold Division of the tournament. Our early loss to Moribor put us as the five seed in this division which paired our first match against the Slovenia Junior National Team. We (the coaching staff) had seen them play in Lubijanna. They have 15-16 year old girls on the team that have not played professionally which makes them very recruitable. We had a good idea of what they were going to bring to the table because we all watched them very closely to see if any of them would be able to fit into our college programs. We knew they would have a great libero, setter, outside and a middle with a lot of potential. We presented our game plan to the team and the USA girls went after them. We beat them easily in game 1 but lost game 2. Carrie [Minogue] did a great job for us in the middle. She is really elevating her level of play and can not wait for her to get better as a Catamount! Liz [Rondone] played as libero in both matches yesterday so today she was a serving sepcialist. The international rules are a little different then our rules. We have only six subs per set and if a person comes out, and goes back in, they are not allowed to come back out. Also, in the US we can put as many people intot he same position as long as we don't use all of our subs. Here, we can't do that. Once someone subs in and out, that position is closed for more subs. Today Liz was serving for a middle and was able to play as long as we kept scoring. Once we sided out, Liz subbed out for the libero. With both pf our girls contributing in each game, we won games three and four, winning the match.

We were able to get in a few hours of free time before the semi-final match which was at 7 p.m.. I am completely exhausted and used our 3 hour break for a power nap! Even though we have been here for a week, my body is still on Eastern Standard Time. I am having problems sleeping at night (but which coach doesn't when they have a team competeing) and I know I am dehydrated. I can not drink enough liquids. I can not wait to get back to the US and drink a super-sized diet coke with a lot of ice! The beverages are such small servings and there is no ice. We had an injury tonight and there was no ice at the facility. There are no trainers here either. The European coaches are the trainers. I am so thankful for Emily! (our trainer)

This evening was a big match for Team USA. We played the two seed, and host team, OK Pula. This was our first true away match of the tournament. They had their family and friends here, the officials are from here, and we were playing in their home gym. OK Pula has 2 athletes that play professionally in Italy, Division I, which maybe the best league in the world. This team was no joke. They came out banging balls and immediately took control of the match. We had a lot of unforced errors and lost set one 22-25. Game two we had a little less errors.

We had to make a few adjustments to Carrie's blocking and it took her about 15 points but she finally caught on. I was really impressed that she learned something new, during an intense match, and executed. Megan Bower, who plays at Michigan, turned it up and the team followed her and we won set three. The team for OK Pula did not adjust well to our adjustments and we won set four. As simple as this sounds there was nothing simple about these sets. Each athlete on the court gave all that she could for each point, and that was on both sides of the net. We had such long rallies that I got out of breath just sitting on the bench. We went into set 5 and dug ourselves into a hole 1-4 hole and we were not able to ever catch up. It was a heart breaking loss for us. We wanted to get to that Championship match so badly. We were the only USA team in Gold Division and we wanted to represent our country.

Tomorrow we play for third place against the Italian Youth Team. This match is what everyone expected the championship match to be. They were beat by Maribol, the team that beat us earlier this week. Lizzy will be back at Libero and Carrie will, of course, be working in the middle. The Italians are huge. They have a 6'6 rightside that is quite mobile. It is going to be a very tough match and I hope we can bounce back from tonight's loss and bring home a bronze medal. Tomorrow is also our last night in Pula. I hope it is a good one!

FRESHMAN VOLLEYBALL PLAYER CARRIE MINOGUE BLOG

Today was another great day of volleyball mixed with some great sight-seeing. We started off the morning with a tight match with Falconara, a team from Italy. We split the first two games and came out ready to play in the third. At the end of the game we rallied from a 23-21 deficit to win 25-23. There was a lot of energy and emotion on the court and it was a great win, which put all of us in a good mood for the afternoon. After the game some of the team went to the coliseum in the city square in Pula. As one of only 6 coliseums left in the world, it was really cool to walk around and roam where the gladiator games once took place. After looking around a few of the shops we decided to head back to the hotel and take a much needed nap. Today's bus adventure didn't take nearly as long and we were back to the hotel pretty quickly.

Tonight we went back to playing American volleyball, which is much different than the way the European teams play. American teams are much more fast-paced and get the ball to all of their hitters while European teams tend to have much slower sets and are dominated by one or two players. We played Front Range, a team from Colorado, in a best-of-5 challenge match. With the winner advancing to the championship bracket, there was a lot riding on the match. After a close first game, we won the second and third games pretty easily, putting us with the top 8 teams in the Brijuni, or gold, bracket.