Season So Far

I need to get an update on how the matches are going because we've already played seven (four in the championship and three in the cup) so far, and I don't want to get too far behind.

The first round we traveled to Kiev to play Lokomotiv Kiev, a decent team that recently lost a lot of their top players because of financial issues at the club. They were a very young team, and came out hot in both matches and won the first sets, but our team settled down and won the next three on both Saturday and Sunday, to begin 2-0 and sit 3rd in the table.

The following weekend the championship went on hiatus for the first round of the Ukrainian Cup. The cup system in Ukraine is two rounds of group play, starting with four groups of four, then two groups of four, with the top two teams from each group advancing. The final four teams have a traditional playoff to determine the cup winner. We were lucky enough to be a host for the first group, and played matches against Lokomotiv Kiev (again), a team from the "High" League from Chernigov, and Lokomotiv Kharkov-3, basically their youth team. We won all three matches 3-0 and never had any problems in any of the matches. I started and played the whole match against Kharkov, and did okay.

We had the following weekend off, and then we made the trip to Vinnitsa, about 300km west of Cherkassy. After training Friday afternoon and Saturday morning we played the first match Saturday at 4:00pm. We won 3-0, with scores 22-25, 16-25, and 24-26. They are a young team, with a good opposite and a big (6-11) outside, but poor ball control.

The facilities for the match were poor to say the least. There was only one locker room with two working showers that we had to share with the other team and random people who were using the fitness center there. And the playing hall had a floor that seemed like it was from pre-Soviet times, with spaces between the slats of wood, and real risk of splinters from diving. There were also some nails showing on the floor as well, and the ceiling was only about 30 ft high. Valeriy (our captain) joked that they would be hosting the World League there next year...

The second match started off poorly for us, and we were down by five or six at one time, and I changed in midway through the first. We got some counterattack points and came back to level the score at 21, and from there it was a sideout battle, until finally we made a breakthrough and took the first set 27-29. The second set started off the same, with us falling into an early hole, though eventually we came back, and I had two blocks (including one on the 6-11 guy) to eventually win the set 26-28. The third set was easy however, as we jumped out to an early 7-1 lead and had no difficulty finishing them off 17-25.

The wins were good, and though the set scores were close we deserved to win each time. The only negative from the weekend was that our outside hitter (and arguably best player on the team) sprained his ankle at 2-2 in the first set of the second match. But we have depth at outside luckily, and Losha was able to come in and do well.

The second match was the first time I felt like I played at my normal level, and the first time I've done so in a match here in Ukraine. I connected well with the middles and had good rythym with the outsides (my biggest struggle so far) and had some good defense and blocks.

Apparently after the match on some volleyball forums people were bashing us about the wins, saying that we haven't really done anything good this season, and that our coach is terrible, etc, which I find quite funny (but interesting), because people really are passionate about volleyball here, and have teams that they support, much like football (soccer) and basketball.

After the game there was also some drama within the team. We bought some beers to drink on the busride home (5+ hours), but when we stopped to get gas (and everyone got off) the technical director went back through the bus and took all the beers, and put them on the seat next to him. However, we stopped about 30 minutes later and he got off, and we grabbed the beers from the seat next to him and redistibuted them. We he got back on he was pretty angry, and wouldn't let us stop to use the toilet. There were some discussions (none of which I understood) though everything turned out fine.