Finishing

Well we are at the end of our season! 6 more games left. And it should end in intense fashion. We are currently sitting in 6th place and to move up to Liga B we have to stay in the top 6. So we have to hold position with 2 teams ahead of us by a game, and 3 or 4 teams barely behind us. It is going to be crazy!

Well we are so close to coming home that I can almost sense it! Even though my stay here in Europe has been awesome!, I am still ready to be getting back home. And then summer begins, and beach volleyball!!!!

All FGVA better be getting ready for the summer domination! :)

Long to slow

Well after some wild weeks of volleyball camps, bad losses, and good wins things slowed down a ton. We all of a sudden had long week that was back to normal. Well in that week my computer went haywire on me and no longer works. Yeah, I almost went and bought a Mac that instant. But after some work I think it might be a registry error. I don't know what that means. So hopefully I will get it fixed soon....
One thing I did get to do though was go to a sweet (and huge) board games shop! They had so many board games I couldn't believe it. It is actually a board games bar, so you can play the board game for free as long as you buy something to drink. Well I am with Manu and he wanted to play Rune Quest. I said yeah lets do it, I will play anything. Well Manu gets out a game about a meter long (3 feet) and 45 centimeters (1.5 feet) wide. It had more pieces than Risk, more cards than a Magic the Gathering deck, and the rules where 40 pages long. Manu was thinking about buying it and so I said lets learn it and play! Well about 2 hours later we finally finished reading the rules. 30 minutes later finally got the board set up. And then we begun playing. It took us about 2 hours to play with all the reverting back to rules and what does what. In the end though, it was a blast and I can't wait to do it again. Oh yeah, the game costs about 100 euros, so about 150 dollars. We played it for free.

I would like to do a quick shout out..... to myself. haha. Me, Manu, Jan and Scott/Yentel played hearts last week. I won shooting the moon for the victory. In the months of not playing, I haven't lost a beat. Haha.

Well we had a really weak game this last weekend. It was really weak. And it was one of those games, if we could have won it would have propelled us up to the higher seeds in our league. Another missed opportunity. But out of it I think some good has come.

The most interesting thing thus far in my life is the way I play volleyball. Take you back a couple years, I was loud on the court and said my thoughts regularly. Well for two years there at Fresno State that didn't work well with the other personalities on the team and not to mention the 'casual' co-ed volleyball I was playing. It made the people around me uncomfortable and unconfident. So it wasn't working and so I changed the way I played. I became quite, in control, and steady. And it worked! To a certain extent. But I get here and they expect me to step up. They want me to be loud and yell and call for the ball and be aggressive. So I am having to change everything that I have learned and thought was right back to what I thought was wrong. It will be an interesting next two months to finish the season. Not only do I have to change the way I play, but I have to change myself. One phrase keeps going through my mind, "change the situation."
Wish me luck! or give me some prayer....

Good week!

So yeah we had a great week this week! Jess and I had good talks last night, we are almost done with 24 season 5. We went and saw Stephi play a couple nights ago against Amigos and they won in 5! It was a good game. We had the most amazing Pitas last night! I tell you, the Pita Pit in the States has nothing on this place! SO everyone needs to come visit and try the Pitas!

So to sum up last week.... Victory. I went with a group of Zoersel Volleyball players to what they like to call the 'Stage'! It is basically a volleyball camp... And it was a blast. So they had us practice for about 3 hours a day, and then everyone would get to hang out after. Well the hanging out 90% of the time turned into huge snowball fights! All the little ones got a kick out of hitting the Adults. (Mainly Me, Mitch, and Tom). So everywhere we went we created instant snowball fights! I just learned to keep the snow in my pockets.... But I did get some head shots against the young boys and so they learned quick that they were outmatched by an experienced Halo and Waterpolo player. Gotta love those head shots, bad for the hair and bad for the moral. But my downfall was I can't go hitting the little girls in the head. So I would hit them in the legs or the thick jackets and it wasn't enough to stop them! But the bright side was I had an army of little boys who didn't want to fight against me :) Well that was a little insight to the politics and war of snowball fights. The stage ended Wednesday and I can't say how Sad I was that it ended, but also how excited I was also. I was running really low on sleep. But the camp was a blast! I am also learning tons of new ways to coach from the Dutch coaches here....

Let me tell you my new favorite sport to watch in a stadium. Football. AKA Voetball. AKA soccer. I saw the Brugge vs. Valencia European League Game and it was so awesome! Brugge wins 1-0 off of an intense game. Both teams had some super near misses. Like off the pole type of misses. There was drama with one red card and several yellow cards. And when finally the goal was scored the whole stadium went nuts! It was crazy. But probably the craziest thing.... Ask an American how much it would cost to get a Hot dog at the ball game. The answer would be 7 dollars. I got Bradworst (a giant German hot dog) for 3 euros. It was so awesome I had to get another one! But all in all the game was so amazing!

To conclude, with something unpredicted, we beat the Belgium Jr National team last friday. It was sick! This team could very well end up not losing another match the rest of the season. Not to mention it was only their 3rd loss. It was awesome! This year seems to be our year for knocking off top teams. And I have to say, we where pretty clutch. We were down 25-24 in the 4th and we sided out and then scored 2 for the victory. It was sweet! Now to keep winning the rest of the year out...

Well I am checking out for now, God Bless.

Quick

Well quick update:
We lost the game we had this last weekend. I felt like it was the most important game we have had up till this point and we choked. We lost 3-1 to a bunch of guys who are twice our age. I was super frustrated. Half our team thought it wasn't THAT important. Well we dropped 2 places, and now are fighting just to keep our head above water. If we had of won, we would have had a 2 game lead over the last place teams and would have been sitting in a very good spot. Yeah I hoping they are all eating their words. Frustrating.

Tomorrow is a cup game against our in town rivals, I guess the game is supposed to be nuts. It is the semi-finals and so if we win we will be playing in the finals in Turnout. I really want to win.

Well hope everyone is having a good week....

Stupidity

The amazing thing about stupidity in today's world is the fact you can't actually prove it. Sometimes it is so clearly obvious when someone is being stupid; But because there are so many stupid people out there, stupid people will always have stupid people to support them. So they will never know that they are being stupid because they have stupid support. Its a giant circle of irony. The only thing you can be certain about stupidity is the fact that in time it will always create more stupidity. Stupid people will always end up hurting themselves, stupid causes will always implode on themselves and stupid situations will never turn out good. But once again the Irony, stupid always spawns stupid, and will always have stupid to support the stupid. So the question is, "how do you know you're being stupid?"

So its official, Gabe got cut from the Buchanan volleyball team because of "poor attitude". The funny thing is every other coach in the whole valley is wishing Gabe can play for them.

A bright note of my week is I scored 2 goals in short court, indoor Voetbal (soccer). One was on a cross to me and I put it in, and another was in the final seconds. I had the ball on the outside, crossed over to my left foot and gave it a kick. I was happy I just make contact considering it was my left foot, but it ended up going in! It was awesome! But very very lucky..... An Angles in the Outfield type of luck.

Well my weeks are going to get nuts here. Coaching tommorrow, big game sunday. Cup game next thursday, Game Saturday, Sunday girls cup game and Birthday, Mon-Wed VC Zoersel volleyball Camp, Thursday going to Champions league Voetbal (soccer) match- Gent vs. Valencia, Volleyball Match that friday against Jr National team of Belgium. Wild!

Have a good couple weeks!

No More Mud Pies!

I think are team has finally said enough with the bull crap! Huge win this weekend vs. Hassrode! We came out, played strong, got on fire and got the W. All around a good game for us. We took them to school winning 3-0. Hassrode is one of the best teams in our league and they haven't lost at home since last season sometime. The importance of the game is that we are starting to make up points on the leaders. We currently are in 6th place, but only a few points behind 5th and with a win next weekend things will look even better. So we are getting pumped, ready to woop the tar outta the French team! (the team is from the French part of Belgium)
We won our cup game last weekend and so we are in the cup Half-Finals (semi-finals) and we are playing out cross town rivals the Amigos. I am so pumped about this because if we get the win, we will get to play in the finals which is a semi big deal. So I am pumped about it!

It keeps snowing here! They tell us when we first get here, "oh it will only snow a little bit (like once)." For the last month we have seen snow on numerous occasions, and it never goes away. Just stays in the streets, making it hard to walk and drive... Which brings us to the incident yesterday. Scott drove the car into a ditch. Well the correct term is slid. He was going around a turn and hit a super slippery part and lost traction and went straight into a ditch. We were okay and the cars front end is pretty banged up. The interesting part was people were very nice and would be stopping to see if we were okay. Well they would realize how slippery it was and several of them slid out, one almost got into an accident and the tow truck was even sliding around. Yeah all on this little back road. Not to mention when Scott called the tow truck company the lady said, "oh lots of people crash there all the time!" Yeah great!

So the last note and the one pertaining to bull crap, I just found out that my brother got cut off his school volleyball team. And from what it sounds like, for giving blood.... I don't know what to say. After last years fiasco and then cutting him this year, it just sounds like Buchanan volleyball doesn't even care about winning anymore. Its just sad. And one great big pile of Dinosaur crap.

Actually playing again, and putting the wheels back on

So after about a month of not playing, we are now playing again. Last week we had a terrible loss to Bolderburg. Just terrible. It is one of those teams I saw and assessed and said we should kill. But instead we lost 3 tough sets to them close. Frustration could not explain how frustrated I was. So through this week we intensified our practices. Running, intense drills, challenges and complete tiredness. It was great. And it made a difference. We played Zonhoven this weekend and won 3-1. We had quite a lot of fight which was great because we tend to lack in that area. Today we have a cup game and I really want to win it. If we win, we are in the semi-finals of the Antwerpen cup and will play our rival team. I want to win the cup.

So my little girls team has had two tough losses in a row. And it has sucked. When I first saw the girls play I thought, "hey they are really good," they man handled the other teams. And since then they have improved a lot. Well last week we play a team who was back setting their players! I couldn't believe it, 12 years old! And let me explain the rules, they play 4 v 4 and every girl learns how to set, hit and play all the positions. The court and net are shrunk just a little bit. SO back to the game! So we play this team and we played them close. The girls lost a little focus and might have been able to win had they not. But unlike back home, at this age they just play for fun. No parents thinking their daughters are all stars, no girls with I'm better than attitudes and a loss isn't the end of the world. They actually enjoy playing! So at the end of the game I was a little disappointed, but I did see lots of improvement from the girls and they were having fun playing volleyball. And plus I was thinking, "that team was just an anomaly." Wrong. This week we played a girl I called the "monster". She was just under 6 feet tall with a longer wingspan and was crushing the ball on several occasions just outside the 3 meter line. She also had a personal coach that was coaching her from the sidelines opposite of the team coach. She had about 10 kill blocks on us. Yeah, 12 years old..... I think. Get out the birth certificates! But, even with monster our girls still had a chance. They were somewhat close on all the games up to 15 and they played great. They were hitting, trying to block, serving. It was great watching, but then my life would turn into shadows when monster, 3 feet above the net, was smashing down at my girls faces. But at the end of the game Jana, Kate, Feane, Brigit, and Eveliene just laughed it off. Another day of fun volleyball.