4th Annual BIP New Year’s Bash, 2007-2008

Texas Advantage 18 Asics BringitUSA Tour, continued.

Day Six, January 1st (Maribor, Slovenia)
Kayla Kirk, Outside Hitter

Our first chance to sleep in was New Year’s Day and we all took advantage of the opportunity.  We had a late team breakfast at the lodge and then headed for the bus stop wearing our warmest clothes to visit the city of Maribor, Slovenia.  After a 20 minute bus ride we reached the downtown area.  Not far from the bus stop and running through the center of town was a gorgeous river with ducks and swans swimming in the cold water.  We spent about an hour taking pictures and strolling along the banks of the river.

As we left the river and headed in to the main plaza it began to snow.  Seeing a familiar McDonald’s sign we unfortunately spent 30 minutes heading the wrong direction (misleading signs in another language).  Finally, after getting back on track we located the McDonald’s only to find it closed.  In fact, most stores and shops were closed for the holiday.  We found a great alternative at a really neat restaurant called Anchora.  Most of us ate pizza, but several opted for the gnocchi and spaghetti.  What a feast!!  Around the town was a lot of debris from the previous night’s celebration. 

At 6:00 pm we met at the Gondola and rode to the top of the mountain for our farewell to Slovenia dinner.  At the top of the mountain were shops, bars and our restaurant.  The gondola ride was awesome.  The ride was about 20 minutes with beautiful views of evergreens topped in snow on three sides and a dim and foggy yet still breathtaking view of the valley.  We ate dinner at an incredible mountain lodge with a traditional grille meal.  After dinner half our group went down in the gondola while the braver ones skied, or rode sleds down the mountain.  Tomorrow we depart for Vienna and Prague and we spent extra time packing for the 9 hour journey.

Kayla Kirk, Outside Hitter

Day 7, January 2nd (Bus Ride, Vienna, Austria; Prague, Czech Republic)
Sarah Joeckel, Outside Hitter

Today was the second hardest day of the trip.  Ten hours on a bus traveling across Europe was an unforgettable experience.  At 8 am the alarm went off to start the day.  We frantically finished packing and headed downstairs for our morning team breakfast.  After our normal hard rolls and salami, all 60 girls (including the Florida contingent), parents and staff boarded the double decker bus for the trip.  All the TAV girls decided it would be cool to get on quick and sit in the back of the double decker on the top level.  Wrong.  We later figured out that the back meant no air and more cramped space, but plenty of heat.  We rode for 5 hours while listening to Ipods and snacking on Czech mix.

We arrived in Vienna around 12:30 with starving stomachs and legs eager to stretch.  Vienna was the coldest city we had visited yet, but despite the cold was a beautiful city.  We visited an amazing church called Stefansdom located in Stefanplatz.  My teammates and I were on our own to eat, shop and site see, while the parents went to the Opera House and the Sacher Hotel.  After a quick stop at McDonald’s we hit up the H&M store, accessory stores, and many shoe stores.  Not much was bought but the day of window shopping was fun and suddenly it was 4 pm and the time to board the bus again. 

We cramped our big bodies back into the bus and off we headed towards Prague.  During the next 4 hour drive we only stopped twice for bathroom breaks, which was pretty amazing.  After driving through fields of snow and many small towns we pulled into our next stop, the Top Hotel, just outside Prague.  We checked into the hotel and had our normal team dinner.  Although we’ve enjoyed most of the traditional food we’ve had, this was the team’s least favorite meal of the trip.  Off to bed and ready for another day of adventure.

Sarah Jo, Outside Hitter, (John’s best friend)

Day 8, January 3rd (Prague, Czech Republic)
Jordan Kirk, Opposite

Today, January 3rd was our first full day in Prague and was spent touring the city.  We were planning on playing a match here today, but the opportunity to play the Czech Youth National Team tomorrow before the tournament Saturday came up and we switched our plans.  The big news of the day started the evening before when we found out one of our teammates had lost their passport.  We searched every piece of luggage, went through the bus from top to bottom and still no passport.  So before we all left for our tour, our teammate and Rodney went to the American Consulate to get a temporary passport.  Just before we left we found out that a restaurant owner in Vienna had called our teammates dad in the US and had the passport, but unfortunately we had no way of getting the passport before we left for the United States, so our teammate had to go to the Consulate.  By 2 pm that day she had a brand new temporary passport and had spent a little over $100 extra!

We met our tour guide for the day, Standa the son of the former Czech National Team Coach, and bussed into the heart of the city.  Prague is indeed a beautiful city and in spite of the low temperature we visited The Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral, Old Town Square, St. Charles bridge, the famous Clock Tower and other sites around the square.  After watching the clock strike noon we enjoyed a wonderful Italian lunch before a short stint of shopping.  Unfortunately, the windy, frigid 20 degree weather forced many of us to return a little early to the Top Hotel, our home while in Prague.  In order to help prepare for the match tomorrow we filled the spa’s calendar for Thai massages. 

At 7:00 we met for a team dinner where John, Rodney and our host Tim discussed strategies and lineups for tomorrow’s matches.  We were starting our match preparations and everyone went to bed early in order to rest up for our first match in a couple of days.  Needless to say, we look forward to our 5 hour bus ride tomorrow!!

Love ya, Jordan Kirk, Ballertown right side

Day Nine, January 4th, (Prague and Ostrava)
Laurie McNamara, Middle Blocker

Due to my inability to ever sleep on a bus, I’m sitting here writing this a little early so I don’t die of boredom during the 5 hour bus ride from Prague to Ostrava.  Today was going to be a good day, it was our second chance to sleep in a little late and have a leisurely breakfast.  Unfortunately a group of teenage Canadian hockey players decided it would be fun to start screaming in the hallway at 7:30 am.  This was particularly surprising due to the fact that they didn’t choose to stop screaming until 2 am last night. 

Anyway, back on track, we left around 11 am on a charter bus to begin the drive to Ostrava.  Halfway through we decided we would try the most authentic Czech restaurant we could find.  So, of course, we went straight to those glorious golden arches to eat at a restaurant called McDonald’s.  I think it’s Czech for “Heaven”.  The drive was particularly uneventful.  I felt, oddly, like we were driving through Texas except for the whole snow part. 

The most entertaining part was watching teammate Jen Neice dancing or trying to figure out the Czech language on the billboards.  I was highly unsuccessful.  My new best friend on the trip is Coca Cola Light.  Another teammate, Dani Alva, and I completed the seemingly impossible task of removing Jordan Kirk’s Ipod earphones from her ears while she was sleeping.

Once we got to Ostrava we headed straight for the gym.  We had worn our uniforms and were ready to play one of the Czech Youth National teams.  When we arrived at the gym we found that it was also a University with special training for volleyball.  There were five courts at the University and we went into the Central Gym to begin our warm up.  We played 4 games against the team and won all 4 so we weren’t sure what level of youth national team they were, but the real Czech Youth National team and coach were there to scout us while we played.  Everyone got to play, but it was the only match we are going to play using USA rules since the tournament the next day will be European rules. 

After the match we ate a team dinner of traditional Czech food at the facility and then headed to the much anticipated Hotel Arena.  We had heard the hotel was formerly some kind of communist complex and when we got there we checked in to our “extra spacey” 9 x 9 room complete with a 10” by 10” bath towel per person and something that masqueraded as a bar of soap!  So generous!  You would need to see the room and hotel to appreciate it.  There was also going to be no maid service or room service for our three day stay, so we knew what to expect.  That aside, we were exhausted from traveling and playing and we soon fell sound asleep!

Love, Laurie McNamara….Middle Blocker/Outside Hitter

Day Ten, January 5th, (Ostrava, Czech Republic)
John Sample, Head Coach & Rodney Prater, Assistant Coach

Excited about our previous night’s win we ventured out again to the Klub University Courts.  We were seeded one in our 4 team pool which included the Czech Republic Youth National Team, along with the Slovakian Youth National Team and a local Ostrava Club team.  Not knowing what to expect or how the tournament was run we showed up ready to play.  The venue was a University that specialized in volleyball complete with 5 courts, classrooms, dining hall and the now standard bar or maybe it’s a bar with volleyball courts attached.

We were given our own USA University locker room for the tournament and shown where the buffet food was for the teams.  The girls changed from snow boots to volleyball clothes and went out to watch the first round of play.  The Czech team looked very good as they finished off the Slovakian team in two.  The Czech team had a 6’ 5” middle and a couple of big outside hitters and were steady at passing and digging.   We were ready to take the court against the local club team that wasn’t big but played great defense.

We won the match in two behind some great serving by Dani Alva and Laurie McNamara, timely hitting from Shannon Hawari (10Kills), Jordan Raines (7Kills & 3 Aces) and Jordan Kirk (5Kills) and excellent defense by the entire backrow led by libero Jennifer Neice.  We shook hands, took pictures and waited until our next match.  One of the pluses for us coaches was not having to down ref and call lines during our off times.

Match two was against the highly regarded Czech Youth National team.  They were every bit as big as us with the big 6’ 5” middle and a 6’ 1” right side that was very good.  We were out of sync most of the first game as they came away with a 25-18 win.  Our serve receive broke down and led to too many free points for the Czechs.  Shannon Hawari (5Kills and 2 Blocks), Kayla Kirk (4Kills) and Laurie McNamara (4Kills) led our efforts.  In game two we broke out early to a 9-3 lead and held it throughout the game.  Kelsey Mahoney spread out the offense as Kayla Kirk (6Kills), Laurie McNamara (2 Kills & 2 Blocks), Jordan Raines (2Kills & 1 Ace), Sarah Joeckel (2Kills), Jordan Kirk (2Kills)  all contributed offensively while Jennifer Neice and Dani Alva dug and passed every ball.  The Czech’s made a furious run at the end but we prevailed 25-19.

Game 3 was back and forth with our front row players seeing a lot of back court time because of the 6-1 rule.  Jordan Kirk, our opposite came through with a timely block assist with Shannon Hawari at 10-11, then Sarah Joeckel tooled a shot off the block to give us a 12-11 lead followed by another Hawari-Kirk Block to go up 13-11.  A hitting error by us gave us a one point lead which became 2 when Sarah Joeckel found a seam with a hard shot. One serve later it was match on another block by Kirk to give us the 2-1 win.  Hawari and Raines led the way with 3Kills each while Hawari and Kirk combined for 6 Blocks.

Match three was against the Slovakians and we were ready to play from the start.  We jumped out in front early, and in spite of some incredible play by their middle and opposite, we stayed in front both games for a 2-0 win.  Jordan Raines led the way with 7 aces and 4 kills, Shannon Hawari had 7 kills and 3 Blocks, Kayla Kirk and Sarah Joeckel had 5 kills each, Laurie McNamara and Jordan Kirk had 4 kills each and Kelsey Mahoney had 30 assists.  Match 4 was our quickest against a local Czech club team as we posted 25-12 and 25-10 wins.  Shannon Hawari with 8 kills and Jordan Raines with 7 kills led the way. 

The Championship pools.  From the 5 four team pools we now had two pools of 5 with a Championship playoff by finish between the two pools.  We were playing two more matches this afternoon, followed by two matches tomorrow morning.

The teams in our pools were Cze 91, Brno, Mittal kky, Cze 92 and SG Ostrava.  The opposite pool was Cze 90 (the Czech Youth National team we beat in our pool), Plzen, Olomovie, Mittaljky, SG Ostrava, Pbystrica.

Our first round in Championship Pool was against Cze 92 and we won 2-0 behind some outstanding play Shannon Hawari, Jordan Raines and Jordan Kirk who combined for 22 kills for the match.
 
The second match was against SG Ostrava and again we prevailed with a 2-0 win as we were getting more used to the 6-1 played by the Europeans.  Jordan Raines had 10 kills on 10 swings with 2 aces to complete a 100% hitting match.  Sarah Joeckel had 8 kills and Shannon Hawari had 6 kills to round out the effort.

We elected to forego the local meal and headed for a local restaurant for our team meal.  Tim Kelly found an amazing restaurant that served incredible food at reasonable prices as we feasted on Greek salads, pasta, chicken and steak.  After overeating we returned to the previously mentioned rooms at the Arena Hotel.  When we returned we found out that no one was kidding about no maid service as none of the beds were made nor any linens or towels changed out. 

The final two matches were on Sunday.

Day Eleven, January 6th  (Ostrava, Czech Republic)
John and Rodney

Whether it was the excitement of almost going home or just the end of a long trip the team had difficulty getting to bed on Saturday night and some were finally asleep by 1:30.  It has been a long 11 days with the combination of long travel, heated matches and lots of sightseeing and 7:15 came too early for all of us.

We arrived at the Klub University Gym early for our match against Brno with high hopes after winning 6 matches in a row including the match against the undefeated Czech 90 team.  During the shared warm-ups we soon understood that we were in a bigger match as the Brno team started hitting into our team on our side of the court as we warmed up.  We had scouted them the prior day and knew they could hit just about anywhere on the court they wanted and rightly assumed it was to make a point.  Not to be outdone our players began retaliating in what turned into the most exciting warm-up of the tour as Rodney and I continually dodged balls as we tossed balls to the setter.

We maintained a first game lead to 18-17, but a run of serve receive errors and hitting errors led Brno to 6 point run that turned into a 25-20 win.  Jordan Kirk, Jordan Raines, and Kayla Kirk provided most of the offense with 3 kills each.  Game two began the same way as we led to 16 only to give up two runs of 5 points and lost 18-25.  Jordan Raines with 6 kills, Shannon Hawari and Jordan Kirk with 3 kills each led the TAV effort on offense.

Brno had lost to Czech 91 in the prior match in 2-two point games, so we needed to beat Czech 91 by a bigger score than our loss to Brno to win the pool.  The team we had beaten in pool one, Czech 90 was cruising in the other Championship pool and we wanted a chance at beating them again in the final.

Our first game against Czech 91 turned out to be the most exciting game of the tournament for our team.  Neither team held more than a two point lead the entire game and by 25-25 all of our back row subs were over and the starters would need to play all the way around to finish the match.  We had game points at 26-25 on a McNamara kill, 27-26 on another McNamara kill, 28-27 on a Kayla Kirk kill, tied it up at 29 on an incredible dump by setter Mahoney, went ahead 31-30 on a Hawari slide down the line, went up 32-31 on a Raines kill, but ended up losing 34-32 on a serve receive error and a huge line shot by their 6’ 2” outside hitter.  Jordan Raines and Kayla Kirk led the way with 6 kills each along with Laurie McNamara with 5 kills and 1 ace.  Jen Neice and Kayla Kirk combined for 15 digs to lead the defensive effort.  Most of the gym surrounded our court for all of game one and it seemed like most were cheering for our American team.

Game two was more of the same until we reached 18-18 where again our serve receive faltered on two rotations giving up 3 points each and ending the match with a 20-25 loss.  Kayla Kirk and Laurie McNamara took honors with 3 kills each while Jordan Raines, Jordan Kirk and Shannon Hawari each had 2 kills.
Not where we wanted to be but we were tied for 2nd in our pool with a head to head loss to the other team. 

We were disappointed in our last two matches, but played well enough to win both with a little better passing and defense.  Our last match for the final medal was against a very good Olomovie team that had won their pool the first day, lost by two against the Czech 90 team and lost in three to PLZEN.

The first game went all our way as everything was working.  Our serve receive scored 2.8 in the game and Mahoney was able to spread out the offense and we won 25-18.  In the break between game one and two our libero became sick and was not able to play in game two to create some extra excitement.  Not to worry, we had a second libero, Dani Alva, ready to step in and do the job.

In game two our passing again broke down early combined with some uncharacteristic hitting errors and Olomovie jumped out to an early 7 point lead.  We began trading side outs and suddenly we were at 17-22 and looking like we were going to a third game.  Some timely serving by Kayla Kirk gained us 3 points before we gave up a point and another 3 point run put us at 23-24 when an incredible one handed dig by Jordan Raines and a perfect set by Mahoney and back row attack by Raines gave us a 24-24 tie.  Two great digs by opposite Jordan Kirk and kills by Kelsey Mahoney and Shannon Hawari gave us the match and a medal!

We left for a quick lunch and then came back for the closing ceremonies where all 20 plus teams were seated in perfect lines on the court as the winning teams were announced.  Our team captain went up and received our medal along with gifts for the players and coaches.  Finally the all tournament team was announced and along with 5 other players, our own Jordan Raines was announced as All-tournament.  Congratulations on a great tournament and play in Europe to all the TAV 18Asics team.  They represented TAV and the USA in the best way possible and earned the respect of the teams that were at the tournament.

Our final dinner turned out to be an unusual choice.  Scouting the entire downtown area in Ostrava Tim Kelly, Michele James (Dani Alva), Jennifer Kirk (Jordan Kirk), and I found a Czech Mexican Restaurant that had some amazing food.  We napped and headed for the restaurant and grazed on ribs, fajitas, flank steak, and something called Beast Feast that Rodney and Ken Hawari shared that seemed to have every meat in the Czech Republic on it along with potatoes, peppers and a lot of other food.  We headed back to our last few hours at the hotel (I will say I spent a lot of time looking for that hotel light that is always on for you, but couldn’t find one in the Czech Republic). 

We departed Ostrava at 12:30 am for Prague in the middle of a snow storm for a 4-5 hour ride that ended up lasting a lot longer than we planned.  A 3 hour flight from Prague to London, and a 9 hour flight from London to Chicago got us a 3 hour weather delay in Chicago before finally finding our way home on Monday night. Our 30 plus hour trip home was over and our fantastic trip in Europe had ended.

Post Notes:  A special thanks to Tim Kelly, owner of BringitUSA for his time, attention and patience with our team, parents and staff.  Tim’s ability to “cut to the chase” on just about any issue was refreshing and fun to be around.  Tim’s honesty about our areas for improvement was appreciated by all except maybe the players.  The arrangements were great, the touring was wonderful and the volleyball matches were just what we were looking for when we went.  Texas Advantage’s first European adventure was a success and we are looking forward to our next expedition with the BringitUSA group.  A special thanks also to Cory Solomon, Tim’s partner and husband of the best libero we saw during the whole trip.

What did we learn in Europe?  We learned that European hitters see the block probably 90% of the time along with every hole we leave in the court.  We learned that there are at least three people chasing every loose ball on every play on European teams.  We learned that vicious serves are part of each of their games and finally we learned that we can compete at that level.  Nineteen people (players, parents, staff) spent most of every day together for 12 days and enjoyed each other’s company.  What more could a coach ask for!

What a great game this is!