When I went to Asia, I had been playing volleyball for a little over a year. After a month in Asia, Ryan and I played our first international tournament, which is detailed earlier in this blog. We had never touched the Mikasa ball, and in general, we sucked. We ended up winning one game and then going to another tournament the following week and I’m not sure if we scored more than ten points. One detail that I don’t think made that story is that we met some other Americans that had moved to Guam. One of them, Tatiana, told us that she had been playing for Guam and as new players, we were super impressed. She later informed us that she wouldn’t be a top player in the US, but the field is limited in Guam, so she’s top tier there. This started things swirling in my brain. I did some research and FIVBs at the time were using the star system. For American players, the prize pool of winning a one star wasn’t worth the travel if the tournament was held somewhere far from the US like Cambodia. I had the grand scheme of planning a trip to one of these locations and playing for the US and if we lost, then it’s just a vacation to that place. After that trip, COVID happened and after COVID, the FIVB switched to a new system that moved from five levels down to three, which basically pushed stars one through three into one division, crushing all hopes of us finding a tournament with no American teams.

I haven’t kept up with the blog or really posting, but I’ve taken a number of Ls this year. The citizenship stuff in Italy hasn’t gone well and it’s caused some other issues, but I’ll detail that in a post once it’s finally over. So after some bad citizenship news in April, I started digging into FIVB Futures details. There was a chance I wouldn’t be allowed to leave Italy and there were three events in Italy. I called up Ryan and asked if he was in to be dragged on more crazy adventures, and it’s usually an automatic greenlight for him. I began digging through player’s manuals and FIVB regulations and registered us to play in Lecce, Italy, a city we had lived in for a month. As I kept my eye on the registration list, no other American teams seemed to have joined, but neither had we. I had our confirmation so figured we just didn’t show up yet. What I learned is that US teams aren’t registered until the week before the deadline closes. A few days before the deadline closed, we found out that there were other American teams registered, and well known ones at that. There was no way we were taking that spot from them. Ever the optimist, I found an event in Switzerland, just outside of Italy, the same weekend that had another American team that I didn’t know and also wasn’t filled. Maybe that team didn’t have any points either, maybe it wouldn’t fill and we’d just get in. As the weeks went on, the tournament got more and more full. We were 25th on the reserve list. Even if we accounted for teams going over their country limit, we were still about 18th. We cancelled Ryan’s ticket to Europe and gave up on the dream. I had returned to the US and on the day I was to return to Italy, I randomly checked the teams list. Qualifications list, 16 seed, Massari/Rapini. We forgot that we didn’t need 18 teams to drop, we just needed the one American team to drop. Hopefully it was nothing bad, but we were in.

Test Your Might

I reached out to the USAV director and informed him that we got in and was told that we needed background screens, to complete classes and a health screening. Easy, easy and uhhh we will see. My Italian is decent, but is it “I’m playing a professional beach volley tournament, can you sign this to say I’m fit?” good? After returning to Italy, I called about making an appointment. Italy has two separate health certificates required for fitness things like going to the gym or competing in a tournament. For just going to the gym and general fitness, there is the medical agnostico and for competition, you need the medical sportivo agnostico. I’m still not sure what qualifies you to need either, as my yoga studio requires the first, but my gym requires nothing. I’ve played tournaments in Italy without one, but the big ones require it. Either way, I figured I would knock out the competition one and have it for the future, and then they would have to sign the FIVB health certificate because they’ve already said I’m fit enough to compete.

The only appointment I could get was less than a week before we were to be playing in Switzerland, so not much time if something went wrong. I showed up to the office and had a seat. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, things don’t move quickly in Italy. In Rome, government offices will give you appointment times like “8:30/9” which basically means, you show up at 8:30, but if I’m not ready until 9, you can’t complain. The doctor finally arrives and has some electrical device on his desk and then a step for step ups, so I think this should be easy enough. They take me to another room and start asking me questions. They mentioned a stress test and then take my shirt off and start suction cupping these electric wires around my chest. I’m stressed. Test worked. Then for five minutes, they are messing with the machine and saying it won’t work. At this point, I’m expecting to be shocked. We go back to the original room and get me set up on another variation of the device and nothing happens. They remove the suction cups and tell me to start doing high knees for three minutes. Mind you, I’m in regular street clothes, except they’ve had me remove my shirt and shoes and I’ve done no other physical activity today. I start doing high knees and they start asking me questions in Italian.  Like I said, my Italian is okay, but three minutes of high knees is removing all of the Italian in my brain. I am actively dripping all over this doctor’s office. They start having a conversation and I am pretty sure we go past three minutes. Then they have me lay down and suction cup me back up. It was an electro cardiogram, I’m an idiot. They ask me a few more question, I tell him I need the FIVB form signed, he gives me an odd look and asks if I’m playing for America or Italy. I tell him America, but hopefully Italy in the future. He says that’s the right answer and signs my form. Now we have all the requirements to play.

Right before Ryan arrives, I find out that Rome is rejecting my papers again and due to visa days, I will have to leave Italy again. So instead of having time to practice with Ryan, I am running around during the day getting documents in order and figuring out what I need to do. He arrives Sunday, I take care of business Monday and we grab some dinner Monday evening with our good friend (who has a bit more professional playing experience than us) Alex Ranghieri so that he could answer a million questions about our first FIVB event. Hilariously, all of the questions I was asking him were so commonplace for him that he seemed almost unsure of the answers. I was trying to make sure we did everything by the book and he just told us to go enjoy. So that was the plan.

We had moved up to Milan Tuesday to stay with Carla and be closer to Spiez, since staying in Italy is way cheaper than Switzerland and that’s where Carla lives. When we originally registered for the Italian tournament, we thought it was hilarious that we would be representing the US but with two Italian surnames in Italy, so I called our good friend Andrea Stuto to register as our coach. What could add to the hilarity more than having an Italian coach in the mix? Unfortunately, Stuto is cooler than us and had to bail last minute to go lead some physical training in the Maldives, so he didn’t come coach us, but we did get to see him for dinner in Milan. Dinner consumed, it was time to make sure we were packed and ready to go. The next day, we took a two hour train to Spiez. No backing out now.

Screensaver In Real Life

As I detailed in an earlier post, Switzerland is fake. It’s all a screensaver, I’m convinced. Every part is gorgeous, and the ride between Milan and Spiez was no exception. What is not gorgeous are the prices. Even with the player discount on hotels, the hotel was going to run us 240 euros per night, ouch. With the high chances of us losing, booking more than one night seemed like a big investment. Although, if you win two qualification matches, you move onto pool play and your hotel/food is comped. We were feeling brave and an extra day in Switzerland isn’t too bad, so we opted to book two nights. Right before booking, I found an Airbnb that had opened up right in the center of the city for 290 for both nights. Easy.

We arrive in Switzerland, eat a pretzel and then go to register. I’m not really an anxious person when it comes to competition, but the entire day leading up to the tournament, my brain was on fire. A lot of the cool things I do aren’t fueled by bravery or some narcissistic view of myself, it’s more like an adrenaline whirlwind fueled by the fear of terror (and shame death associated with imaginary people talking shit about me). This was definitely one of those cases. I contemplated disappearing and leaving Ryan to register alone…but that didn’t happen. We booked a court to train the night before we played. First, we ventured to the main courts to register. Basically, we took a train and then had to go down a super steep hill to find the courts. I definitely have some photos here, because this is one of the most picturesque courts I’ve ever played on and they are permanently located there. Two courts at the bottom of a valley, right next to a lake with mountains as the backdrop. Insanity. A few teams are warming up as we walk by. As we walk up to the registration, I realize that I am the shortest player there by a large margin. We try on some jerseys and get a quick rundown for the next day. We received a name badge, some sports shower gel and instructions that we would receive our jersey on the court when we arrived for our game. Easy enough, we had some time before our practice court booking, so headed back to grab some snacks.

A train and bus ride took us to the other location of courts. Two courts in a gorgeous park in Thun. We had the reservation at 8:30pm, so it was already getting dark. There were girls practicing on the main court and a group of guys training on the warm up court. Ryan spoke to the court director while I went to get changed and one of the Lithuanian girls recognized Ryan from training in Mallorca and audibly laughed when he said we were playing the next day. After the court opened up, the group of guys sat around and watched us warm up. This year, the FIVB hastily switched to a new ball to meet the qualifications to use the ball in the next Olympics. Up until recently, it was impossible to get your hands on that ball, and I actually just got one the day before we left for Switzerland, so this was my second time using it and never in a game. I could hear the group of guys talking asking questions about us as we got started, so my anxieties became reality. Since Stuto couldn’t make it, we had no one to serve to us, so we did a pretty basic warm up practice set. Pepper, shot rundowns, shots, swings, serves. All the basic stuff made a bit more difficult by a ball that played differently. After a little more than an hour, it was already dark, so we said goodbye to the court director and took the bus back. We realized that Switzerland was not Italy and there were no food options at 10pm, so grabbed some kebabs and went home to sleep. The Airbnb had no air conditioning, so we cracked the window for some airflow and found that we were directly next to the river, so we got free river noises to sleep to.

We had our match assignment, first men’s game, 12:20pm against the Qualifiers 1 seed. The number two ranked team in Australia. I did some googling and unfortunately, there aren’t many videos of players at this level. From what I could tell, they were decent and looked pretty tall. We decided to show up a bit early to warm up and watch some games so we got everything ready in the morning, ate some food and headed to the courts. We didn’t receive our jerseys until the game and Europeans don’t usually play shirtless, so I had to decide what to wear for the warm up. We had just gotten the jerseys from Alex, so I went with that. Again, we didn’t have anyone to serve to us, so it was all basic warm up stuff, made extra weird because another team that didn’t play for 3 hours was doing a full practice session with their coach and we were using half of the court at the time. After a good warm up and serving at each other, we were about thirty minutes out from our match. The other team got on the court and started warming up. One was about six foot eight and the other was about six foot five. They definitely had us on height. No worries, we finished our warm up and went to take a break before the game. We were informed the game before us was a forfeit so we’d be on in twenty.

At this point, we’ve been given no real instruction on how anything would work. I’ve watched a lot of professional games, but I guess I never really paid attention to the tournament specifics. The woman with the jerseys awkwardly looked at me when I walked up and said she was looking for the USA team. I told her it was me and she pointed to the ITA on my jersey. I told her it was only for warm up. We had gotten blue, which matched our shorts pretty well. 

Another point that I need to make clear here is the amount of new things going on. Professional game, in another country, against people with professional experience. Refs, line judges, other officials, a crowd and an announcer. Honestly, there was so much going on that I couldn’t even hear the announcer. I have no memory of anything outside of the game itself. Ryan is famously aloof about pretty much anything. Where I am passionate and neurotic, he is unshakeable. This was definitely not the case in this situation. As my adrenaline spiked from the anxiety, I settled into a pretty calm rhythm. This is why I love arguing in games, once I hit that point, it’s nirvana. Ryan doesn’t function like that multiple days a week, so he was uncharacteristically rattled.

They told us that we had ten minutes on the court before the game started. We took some practice swings, but the other team was swinging as hard as they could and were sending the balls flying out of the court. No one went to get us more balls, so we basically stood there part of the ten minutes until I ran off to get balls. We got a few serves in until the same thing occurred. The next thing we knew, the other team was sitting down and the officials were just staring at us, apparently we were supposed to be sitting down. But not entirely, I guess I was the team captain so I had to go up to sign that we were starting the match. There was a coin flip and the other team chose receive, so I chose the side with the sun behind us as there was no wind at the time. They had us sit down and they announced the Australian team first, we at least got to see what they did. This part is pretty standard. As players are called, they usually remove hat and sunglasses, run to the service line and wave to the crowd. When they called my name, I popped off my glasses, jogged over and gave a wave. When they called Ryan, he just sort of ran over. Ever the rebel. We met the other team in the middle, shook hands and the game was to begin. I’ll link the video at the end, but the height difference was drastic.

Let The Games Begin

For the last few years since moving to Texas, I have been really working on my handsets. The more professional play I’ve watched, the more I’ve noticed that whichever team is giving better sets, is usually edging out teams. Being a good setter can help to nullify any weaknesses from passing or hitting. So I’ve put a lot of work in to have that skill, and it’s paid off in games. If you’ve ever played against Stephen and I when I’m in Cleveland and you left the net as soon as Stephen gave a less than ideal pass, you would have been immediately reminded about the value of a good set as Stephen bounced the ball in front of you. When Ryan and I practiced the night before our game, I could not give Ryan a set to save my life. I was doubling, launching the ball past him, setting lower than the net. I couldn’t get it right. So I definitely had some worries about how legal some of my sets were going to be with a professional ref watching, especially since the FIVB has gotten very strict in the last year. I only expound on this because point one Ryan put the team a little of system with his serve. This was followed by a pretty heinous set even by recreation league standards. You can tell in the video that Ryan and I both kind of stop, which you shouldn’t do at any level, and the ball is promptly hit with no whistle called. Everyone made predictions of me arguing with the ref, myself included, because I have a long and storied past of arguing with refs and players, but no argument here. I was a bit out of my element. . You can see Ryan and I discussing that our hands won’t get called as we walk back to serve receive. Next point. The player who doubled immediately serves into the net….ball doesn’t lie.

I usually have a pretty calm serve routine and it’s usually very effective, but something about knowing there was an eight second limit after the whistle had me rushing for my serve the entire time. This led to a lot of easy serves, especially the first one. I also cheated on defense and the ball was promptly hit where I should have been. Next point essentially sees the other team getting a free ball and I make a quick dodge of the hit and it land right inside the backline.

Next up, Ryan gets dug but there’s a block touch so it has to come over. I get a trap set on the left side, but some time playing with Ahsan down in Texas has prepared me for this, so I recycle it to Ryan and it is promptly punched out of bounds, but the other guy got a net touch, point good guys. A service error sees them get the ball back. A nice rip down Ryan’s line gets him in an odd spot and the pass shoots past my face, but I’m able to take a look at the court and poke the ball into the net, dribbling right in between the players. I can tell Ryan is being a bit sporadic, so I tell him to take some breaths.

Two more service errors sees us with the ball again. Ryan serves, they toss up an option and the ball is hit just outside of my left hand as I go for the block and hits the back seam. A service error and a hitting error has us tied with the Australians. Next point, Ryan gets a block touch that is picked up…and then promptly does my least favorite Cleveland thing, leaves the net before the ball is set. The ball is immediately smashed down his line. Next point, Ryan gets blocked and it comes directly back to him, but again, there’s a lot going on and anxiety is high, so he punches it over as a free ball…again smashed down the line. Ryan takes a breath on the next point and hits a nasty cut shot that the defender can’t get.

Another important difference to professional play is that they have people in charge of getting the balls and given to you before the serve. As neither of us has ever had this and it was not explained to us, we kind of just played it how we’re used to. If there was no ball near us, we would get it from them, but if the ball was near us, we picked it up and went back to serve. On two occasions, Ryan was yelled at to switch out the ball, this was one of them. Doesn’t matter, the team realized how much taller than were than us and hit an easy line shot. Next point is an overpass, I make an attempt to get to the net in time to contest, but no luck. Easy point for mister six eight. Next serve is similar, but Ryan takes a bit off and I’m able to get a bump set off. Textbook tool off the block and it’s my turn to serve. I hit a deep corner serve and immediately hear a whistle…the ref never whistled to give me the go ahead to serve. Whoops. I get the ball back and hide it behind my back until she whistles again. This time, I lollipop a serve to the right side. He bangs it cross, I get a hand on it but no dig. “First serve was better.” I chuckle to Ryan as we walk back to receive.

A little float just over the net down the seam is the first serve I receive…it’s also the first in game serve I’ve ever received with the new Mikasa ball. I catch it low and put it a bit too far to Ryan’s left. I take my left step to line up to the set and…Ryan standing hits it several feet out of the back of the court? Like I said, he was rattled. Brand new territory for him. Next serve slams into the tape and pops up, but thankfully stays on their side.

For FIVB play since COVID, teams get a specific side that they must make switches around. Ours was to the side furthest from our seats and it was super confusing. There is a lot going on, so when you notice it’s a side switch, you have to go a specific way, regardless of where you are. There are also technical time outs once you reach a total of twenty one points, and at that point, you go back to your seat. If your side to switch is away from your seats and you go to just switch normal, you’re now very far from your seat and have to run back, which we did both games.

After the technical timeout, I walk back to serve. Fun fact: in beach volleyball, there is no penalty for serving out of order since technically the rules specify that the refs are responsible for keeping track of service order. There are actual refs here, so they tell me it’s Ryan’s turn. Aussies go with a back set and it is bounced into the hard angle where both players have been hitting most of the time. No worries, first game is for feeling out the team. Next serve comes to me. Middle pass, I step in for the set, but it goes wide and high and we’re on the side looking into the sun. No call so I try for a cut and it’s picked up. I go for the line block but it’s again bounced into the hard angle. Insert Sam bitching about no call after the set here. Next one comes down my seam again, but might deeper. I adjust my hips but I’m still not used to this ball so it goes a bit too far right. Ryan cleans it up with a back bump set and having just heard the no call bitching gives a line call. Nice little toss to the back corner is launched out of the court as the defender uses his inside arm to try to flipper. 

My float serve is tossed up in the middle, Ryan doesn’t even make an attempt to block and the ball is hit directly at me. I get my platform that, but forearms are rotated too far internally. With a wilson, that goes right to the center, but with the Mikasa, it enters the stands. I loudly yell the F word. This is important to call out because I usually don’t swear on the court and you can get in trouble for it at this level, but I have yelled a swear word almost every other point at this point in the game and Ryan and I have been waiting for the ref to say something. Still nothing here even though it was pretty vocal. Next up, Ryan launches a seam ball just a few inches too deep, but the blocker isn’t being intentional with his hands and gets a touch on it.

Both of these guys have enough height and vertical on us that they could have just rolled everything over us with just a little pace, but instead they were going for bounces. The set goes out wide and I run with the hitter. He swings outside of my hands and bounces it just outside of the line. Ryan hits a nice inside out serve to the blocker’s line and he tosses the ball up to the middle, almost exactly the same as last time the right side slammed an option passed me into the seam. This time I acknowledge he’s only opened for the seam and reach my left hand in. Terminal block to the back of the court. Toss it on the stat sheet. I am a professional blocker. Unfortunately, next ball they learned their lesson. A weird little cutty just over my hands lands in front of Ryan. He’s still confused that these guys aren’t putting any pace on the ball and didn’t realize he would’ve gotten there fast enough.

After I pass another seam float like garbage, the next point is full of madness, but let me preface this part first. There are two camps as far as the morality of volleyball go on certain things. Most people will say “There is a ref, if they don’t see something, I’m not calling it. It’s their job.” Some people believe in calling their own stuff. I probably land somewhere in the middle. I’m not going out of my way but I won’t lie. Back to the game. I pass the ball middle, Ryan throws a super high double into a trap set by the pin. I poke it into the block and out of bounds but catch the net with my elbow on the way down. I call my net touch and start to walk away. The ref says it is my point, but I tell her I got net and the Aussie blocker also tells her I got net. The ref is super confused. I walk back to serve receive. After getting the video, I noticed the double, but I also noticed that when the blocker went up and got tooled, he put both of his arms into the net. So while I was running blind to a trap set, I assumed I got net due to the weird situation, when in reality, I got net because it was bouncing into me from him getting it with both arms. The audacity of this man to repeat that I got net when there’s no way he didn’t realize he got it with both arms. 

Another middle pass, another high set, but this time no trap. I slam it outside of the defender’s center line and he passes it out of the court. The rundown set goes a bit off of the net so I peel. This guy has done nothing but try to bounce the line so I’m cheated and low and he waffles a deep one at my chest. I get hands on it, but leave them together like an idiot. Time for more peel drills post game. The pass goes up to the net but with a bit too much forward momentum for Ryan to reach. Ryan tries to swing the next one down the seam and goes directly into the block. I’m immediately sad that this guy now has as many blocks as me. Immediately following being blocked, Ryan calls for a timeout. The score is 13-20. I ask him why he wants the timeout. He says this is their longest run and walks back to our seats. After sitting down, he realizes what the score is.

For the duration of these two games, Ryan was so psyched out about getting a double called that he was launching all of my sets about two times as high as they needed to be. This is usually pretty disadvantageous for a smaller player because it lets the blocker set up where the set will be, solidifying their height advantage, and it removes most of the hitter’s vision because they’re having to look straight up at the ball and losing peripheral vision of the court as the go up to attack, not to mention that the ball gains speed as it drops from a higher point, so it forces timing to be more exact. The extra variable in this match was the stadium. The bleachers and such tend to block out most of the wind on the actual court, but once you get above the height of the bleachers, there’s some wind movement, so the ball is affected at the vertex. Adjusting for wind is part of the game, adjusting for wind on some small percentage of the game is a bit more mental work. Nerd rant over, the next set goes really high and Ryan gives a line call. I shoot the line but the defender is already there. Ryan gets a hand on it, but is unstable so the ball is launched out of the back of the court. Game one, 13-21.

Again, But Better This Time

We take a seat and get some water. One of the officials comes and stands directly in front of us with her arms crossed and says nothing. I am immediately convinced I am about to be scolded for the amount of swearing I am doing on the court. I look at Ryan. His eyes are telling me that we’re on the same page. I stare back at her and she says “Your choice.”. They chose serve receive for first game so it was our pick. Again, there’s no real side advantage and Ryan requests that we serve first. Statistically, at this level, a team should have 65-75% chance of scoring the point when serve receiving (unless the opposing server is Evandro or Jake Gibb). For these reasons, I refuse to tell them we pick serve, so I pick the same side as last time and they obviously pick receive, so we still get serve.

Ryan serves the blocker and he goes for another line bounce….again a few inches out. He serves the defender…who goes for a line bounce, which goes a few inches out. Serve three of game one, Ryan slams his serve down the middle, but goes to high so it is definitely going out…but it has a slight curve to it and the defender is already too locked out on his receive to move, so it bounces off his shoulder and leaves the court. Ryan’s fourth serve trickles the net and heads to the line but the blocker gets it up. The set goes outside so he is forced wide. I line up the block, but he decides to take some off it, so my timing is off by about a second. The ball goes perfectly between my thumbs and skims off the top of my head onto the back line. I tell him he gave me a haircut and he doesn’t even crack a smile. Another serve into the net and it’s my turn. The blocker passes into the net and set goes tight. Ryan goes for the joust with his outside hand and the blocker is entirely over him. I get a hand on the resulting touch but not soft enough to get it back to Ryan. The ref makes no call on the open hand, so we head back to receive. Ryan passe middle, gets a set in the middle and I call him line. We’re at 4-2 game 2 and Ryan has gone line exactly 0 times this match….and this point was no difference. He hits cross inside the block and out the back of the court. 4-3 switch. 

A shanked pass puts us to 4-4. Next pass goes to the perfect spot, but we’re on the side with the sun, which is now directly overhead. I acknowledge that I can’t see the ball at all, but my hands are already up, so I’m a bit trapped. Ball goes directly through my hands and we’re at 4-5 from up 4-1. I’d be embarrassed about this point, but Jake Gibb did it at the Olympics in Tokyo, so I feel honored. Ryan passes the next one to his line. When we first started playing together, this was his favorite place to pass, so I’ve got a lot of reps setting from here. I dive under the next and get my platform on it. I get him a decent middle set and he…standing pokes it 20 feet into the air? At this point, I’m directly under the net, so when I roll over to give him the call, I see the blocker hit the net with his arms on the way up. Having read the FIVB manual, I immediately run back to defend throwing up the C with my hand for the challenge. I run into the cross and am a half step too late for the dig. It hits my thumbs and is dead. I immediately engage the ref requesting the challenge on the net touch and just as quickly, she tells me no. Not “There was no net touch”, just “No.”. She waves me back to receive. I’m entitled to 2 challenges, but again there’s a lot going on, so I didn’t push it.

Next point, Ryan over passes, I run to get it if it’s on our side and Ryan stays where he passed it, so the option is bounced to the open court. We walk back to serve receive and the ref doesn’t whistle for the other team to serve. We’re all staring at her and nothing. Then the officials all start speaking to each other, we’re still told nothing. The top ref is waved down to the table and runs over. We’re still told nothing. I’m convinced that the officials are now checking the video and saw the net touch I called the challenge on, but since the top ref completely ignored me and had us play another point, she can’t overturn the previous point anymore. They go back and forth, still saying nothing to us. Two minutes later, the top ref returns to her stand and whistles for them to serve. At no point did anyone tell us what was happening or what was going on, but we’re pretty sure it had to do with my ignored challenge.

Next one is a great pass from Ryan, the blocker is still not being intentional with his hands so Ryan easily goes off the fingers and it goes the opposite direction of the defender. Another bounce down our seam and the next serve comes to me. This time Ryan gives me the lower middle set I actually like, but I’m lined up for the high outside sets he’s been giving me. I dart inside and since it’s a lower set, I have complete vision of the court. I jump up with the blocker and cut the ball to the right side. My turn to serve, but I head back and we all realize it’s a switch. I’ve tossed balls back to the ball people all game, but at this point, it was my turn to serve, so I just walk to the other side with it. No one yells at me, but as we cross sides, the top ref notices and audibly laughs (check for it in the video at 24:18).

I finally get some pace on a serve and it goes up in the middle, this time for the blocker. Remember last time that he slammed it right at me and I was too tense and didn’t get the easy dig. This time, he runs up with a slide and smashes it right outside of my center line. I dive right and get it up to the center with a one hander (an old favorite of mine). Ryan turns of the block and bump sets the ball….to the left side of the court and twice as high as the dig. Insert tears emoji here. I’m just getting up from the dig and now not only don’t have vision but I’m running to a set away from my hitting arm. Ryan gives me a call, but it’s “Come on, come on”, which doesn’t exactly mean anything to me as a hitter. I got for the deep line and miss it by about a foot, which probably didn’t matter because it would have been directly to the blocker. I chuckle at Ryan as we walk back to receive.

Next pass goes just in front of Ryan and I don’t see him take the right step as I go for the set, because he’s a left side who always kicks out to the left. He doesn’t give a behind call until the ball is about to touch my platform, so he ends up getting the same set I just got as I try to change the outside set to a back set. Same as me, he’s coming from the right to a high set with no vision. He recycles the ball of the block and yells “Come on” for me to get the block cover. I get low and get the block cover, shout out Beachbox Camps. I look over to see if Ryan will get the set off and he’s facing out of court. Pika shocked. Back to serve receive. I give Ryan a tighter pass but he gets low and handsets a height I like. I got for my own hard angle bounce and realize I haven’t opened my shoulder to swing once yet. I catch some tape but the ball lands in the first three meters. Hardest angle point of the game, count it.

Blocker goes for a hard angle swing again, but I time the block better this time and get it. Unfortunately, he was swinging deep, so it goes right back to him. I switch the call to line and Ryan forgets that all they do is swing hard angle. Ball lands about four feet to his left. Next serve goes to Ryan and I give him a middle set. I give the line over call and he swings directly into the block I just told him about. I gently weep inside as I remember Ryan’s line shot count is still at 0, 7-12 game 2. Ryan throws his next pass up as an option, but doesn’t say a word. I run up late and poke a high cut. I’m trapped up at the net trying not to go into it and Ryan doesn’t move from where he passed it, another easy point for mister six eight.

Next ball comes to me, Ryan gives me another set I like and the blocker doesn’t reach outside of me or leave my viewline. A few feet of open court to my right and I drop it there again. Cue another technical timeout that we go the wrong way for and have to run back to our seats. After the time out, I go for a quick seam ball, catch tape and get the trickle ace. It’s bullshit, but I’m not sorry. I go back to serve again and for some reason go even lighter than my trickle serve. Rookie mistake. Next serve goes to Ryan, lower fast pass up to the net. I get there in time and toss the set up. As I go to make a call, I realize Ryan is in front of me, so he is definitely in front of the ball. He awkwardly steps back and outside, another shot from the ground, several feet out. I can actively hear Ryan breathing from serve receive now. The anxiety from the game paired with the fatigue from the amount he has been served is visually adding up. With this team going for nonstop showballs, our major key to success is to let them make errors and not make our own. Another reminder to take a breath.

Another seam serve my way. I take a step out instead of in and the high set drifts inside middle. Ryan gives the deep like call, but with the set drifting, anything line is going into the block or so high that I could go pick it up after I shoot it. I go for a little cut but the defender gets it on the dive. He hits a lofty line shot but I’m too dug into to take the two steps to get it. 59 points into this match and this guy hits his first shot. Next serve is down the seam to me again, but Ryan reaches in and passes the ball up to my side of the net. I’ve already taken the step into the seam so I’m nowhere near getting it. Ryan tells me to call him off…I retort that it’s my middle on that serve and his line. As if the server heard me, he hits a perfect float serve right down Ryan’s line next. Ryan gets there with an outstretched arm but not enough to get the ball up. A service error ends their ace streak and sees us switch sides.

Ryan has an odd toss and a mishit to repay them the favor on the missed serve. Deep float to Ryan goes tight on the pass. Following a set, I yell line. At this point, I’m not even looking. Ryan hasn’t gone line single time, the defender is camped in the cross before the set is even off. He goes for the same cut shot he went for before, but now he’s fatigued so it goes out by about a foot. I’m telling Ryan how he has half a court to his left before I’m even turned around. We both walk back to serve receive and as I look across the court, the Aussies are also standing to serve receive. Nothing is said to me, so I assume a net touch by the blocker, who has already had a few at this point, and head back to serve. 

I hit a deep float to the guy who has hit exactly one shot. I see the set go out wide and his chest open up the same way it did game one when I got a hand on it and slide a bit more to my right. He slams the ball about a foot in front of me and to my right,  I drop to get my platform under but don’t get my hips under it enough. The dig is up and to the center. Luckily, it’s high so the blocker has an easy swing, but has no vision, which gives some advantage to the blocker. This is one of the reasons why you’ll see most pro blockers do a block redirect here versus swinging blindly into a block on these types of points. I stumble up and yell for Ryan to go, because from my vantage point, this is a ball he needs to attack. I look over to see if he’s going to attack or set me and realize it’s just over. I also notice in that moment that Ryan has done that stupid Cleveland thing I mentioned earlier where he just left the net instead of going for the block. So instead of contesting the ball, Ryan is in no man’s land and I’m stumbling up from my dig to defend the whole court. The blocker swings seam, catches tape and I’m only able to get a hand on it. Point not converted.

Next serve comes to me, decent set height but is drifting into the block. As I approach, the blocker is again in my midline and not actually in my line. He reaches to get to the ball before I’m at the top and I push the cut into his outstretched hand. The defender knows I have nowhere else to go, but the push off the hands drops the ball within a meter shorter than he was anticipating so he barely gets a hand on it. Shout out Ahsan again for all the trap set training. Ryan puts the blocker in some service trouble on the next point, but he gets an outside set and I’m trapped in the middle from watching the option. He swings line and tags it. Game over.

We shake hands with the team and then with the refs and line judges. I run off to thank the ball people and Ryan follows as the other team heads back to their seats. The officials head towards the table. After we say our thanks, I realize there was one more and start looking around…as I’m looking around, I realize everyone is back to their seats and we are standing on the opposite side like lost puppies. All of the officials are staring at us. I run back to the seats and since I have to sign the official papers again and Ryan is still over on the side looking lost. Everything handled, we go back to our seats to get our stuff. An Oakley case is sitting on my seat and I wonder why I would have left the case on the seat. As I pick it up, one of the Egyptian players up next says it is his. I chuckle as I explain the confusion and grab my things to go sit in the shade. 

The Aftermath

We had some friends speciating so we went to the stands and chatted with them before heading to the lake. We jump in and I immediately realize I’m still not cooled down from the sun. The water is in the sixty to seventy degree range and requires swimming the whole time. We chat about the game and after a few minutes, I realize my odds of cramping are rapidly increasing and take to the stairs. We stick around for a few hours to finish watching the qualifiers and hang out with friends. It starts pouring so we hide in a nearby tent to continue watching. As I realize we’re sitting in the tech tent, I ask the tech guy if the games will be available after that date as they were live on Youtube and you couldn’t go back to previous games. He tells me that due to copyright stuff, the game plays live and is gone forever so they don’t worry about copyright issues with music. I ask if there’s some sort of local copy that we could steal since we played at 5am US time and he says no. After a few minutes, he says “Actually, we had a weird issue today where it recorded the first half of the day. If you have a flash drive or something, you could take it, but you have to find your own game.”. Luckily, Ryan has all the tech gadgets so we did and he said we could come the next day to get our game. 

We stuck around to see how some of the teams we had met ended up and the Australians that beat us ended up playing the only other team that was about our size and didn’t end up making the main draw. The beauty of beach volleyball. After the long day, we head back to the train to go home. As we’re getting on the train, two girls with volleyballs are behind us and just say “Hey, volleyball” as they step on behind us. We find out they are the Canadian team in the main draw and tell them that as the only other North American team, we’re now rooting for them. A few of the top main draw players were on the train as well as they had to go register.

A quick stop for Indian food has us remember why we don’t venture to Switzerland much. Twenty to thirty euros per plate for mediocre Indian food. Ouch. Oh well, we pay and venture around the town a bit. We stop to watch some surfers riding dam waves and then roam around a bit more before opting to go home.

The next day we get up and pack our things. The Airbnb host says we can just keep our key since we will be leave two hours after checkout. We decide to head to the tournament early to get the video and show up in the middle of the first game. There are quite a few Swiss teams in the main draw, so the fans are filled with locals…and many screaming children. We got the video from the tech guy and ventured around the lake for a bit. Ryan stopped to fly his drone around and get some nice videos of the area (which I think are on his Instagram if you’re into that stuff). We had randomly picked some teams to support the previous day, so we stuck around to watch them before running off to the other location to watch the Canadian girls. We were told there was a bus between the two locations, but when I asked about it, I was met with a blank stare.

Since the main courts were in a valley, it was a bit of a brutal walk up to the bus station. We followed Google’s instructions and waited at an unmarked bus station. After a few minutes, we began to wonder if this bus was going to drive right past us. A local from a balcony yelled that the train station was at the top of the hill. We told him we needed a bus and he pointed across the roundabout to a stop. Then he yelled that there was one coming and we sprinted off to catch it and it was the one we needed. Thanks, random balcony man.

A gorgeous bus ride and we get to the courts we had warmed up on. Before we left, I reminded Ryan to grab his player badge because it was required for free admission. He doesn’t love listening so definitely didn’t do that. I flashed my badge, which at the other venue was enough for them to let us both in, but for this one, she immediately looked at Ryan and said “You’re a player, too?”. I withheld my urge to tell her that he is too short to be a player and explained that we play together and she let us both in. 

We made our way to the courts and the Canadian team was down in the first game. This venue was much quieter. No one in the stands and other things going on. In fact, the courts existed in a large park that was entirely filled with people sunbathing and swimming. We stuck around and cheered a bit, but they lost the first and couldn’t eek out the win in the second. The court director we met while training mentioned to us that there was also an international high diving competition at the venue so we walked over to watch some of that. My grandfather and uncle used to high dive, but I’ve never seen it in person. It was madness. Standing at the very top of this structure, the divers would just stare off like in a meditative state, and hop off, flipping through the air into the pool below. Humans do some cool stuff.

A quick bus ride back to the hotel and we stop for some snacks. The Airbnb host informs me that the guests taking our room are early and ask us to give the keys directly to them. Weird, but no problem. We walk in and there are three girls sitting in the common area. As we walk towards are room, they ask “Do you have our key?” and I tell them we do, but need to grab our things first. When we were told we had the room until we left, I didn’t think about the fact that they’d want to clean it still, so we just left our things mostly packed on the table. The Airbnb owner put all of our things in the closet, so now there was an extra layer of checking that we grabbed everything. The girls then proceeded to just stand in the doorway as Ryan and I packed up our things. Mine were mostly packed, so I just grabbed it and handled it in the living room. I hate people being over my shoulder. After a few minutes, Ryan walked in and asked why I did that to him. Whoops. The girls then proceeded to hang out in the common area, so there was no reason for them to hover over us. Oh well. We catch the train and make our way back to Milan.

Two more days hanging out with Carla in Milan and then I was off to Morocco. Rome had rejected my papers again, so I was playing the visa day game again. Ryan headed off back to Switzerland to catch his cheap flight to the US from Zurich and that was the quick trip to become professional USA volleyball players.

I’ll be trying to be a bit more consistent with these blog posts for the time being so next up is Morocco, getting laid off and a trip to Serbia. Until next time, friends!

If you’re interested in watching the game, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6eCjWKOiYM