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Pre-Tour, Thursday, January 6th, 2005
The tour semi-officially started last night with the arrival of the Mulvaney Family (escorting their daughter Kelli) and our Maldivian guests Jalla and Abdulla.
Tonight, as the Mulvaney's were out carousing in Prague, Jirka, Cory, Tim, CJ, and Mort escorted Jalla and Abdulla to their first ever European Volleyball Match in the Olymp Praha Sportshall. In conjunction with both the New Years Bash and the January Exposure Tour, BIP is hosting both USC Braunschwieg (German Top Division Team of BIP's own Tesha Harry) and the German Junior National Team until January 9th. Tonight Braunschwieg played a friendly match vs. Olymp Praha (Prague) in the city center, one of the top teams in the Czech Top Division. It was a nice match with Olymp winning 3-1. (Scores: 23-25, 28-26, 25-12, and 25-21). It was great to see Tesha getting over the net and blocking balls, as well as hitting for well over .500 from the middle. Tesha was on our August Exposure Tour 2004 and we’re happy to see her doing so well.
Tesha Harry, unstoppable vs. Olymp Praha
Olymp Praha’s Jana Senkova vs. USC Braunschweig, German 1 st Bundesliga
Meanwhile, the German Junior National Team played vs. Stresovice in the north of the city. Their winning streak for the week continued as they won 4-0 (25-23, 25-23, 25-20, and 25-14). Hopefully we can finally give them a loss later in the week when we put out #1 Team up against them
Pre-Tour, Friday, January 7th, 2005
Well, today saw the day-early arrivals of Aspen and Kylie, as well as our coaches; Doug and J.R. Nothing of note really occurred, as everyone basically spent today on their own sightseeing in the city center. The onslaught of arrivals starts tomorrow, and then the tour will officially be under way with open training in a gym near the hotel from 3:00-7:00.
The Charles Bridge, with Prague Castle in the background
On the German front, it was just a training day, but we’ll have some more games to report on soon…
Day 1, Saturday, January 8th, 2005
By Kelli Mulvany (…Sponsored by North Face)
We are starting our tour here in Prague, Czech Republic, and will play here for the next couple days. I got here a couple of days ago with my family and was able to do some site seeing on my own. We were able to see the Prague Castle, tour the town, and check out the market outside. Some of the girls came in last night so we were able to get to know each other a little before everyone else came. This morning we woke up and ate breakfast downstairs which includes bread, cheese, meat, and vegetables. They also had some cereal, which is a little different than our typical American breakfast. There were four of us girls here by early morning and we decided to go see the town. We took the metro to our stop and were able to tour around a little before we had practice.
Prague’s Main Square
Our practice started at 3:00 so many of the other girls had come in by then. I was not sure what to expect at all for the practice so I just went in with an open mind and excited to finally play. There
were 17 of us girls for the first hour before six more girls came in. There was only one court for all of us to play on in the beginning so it didn’t seem like we were going to get many touches. I was totally wrong. When the second group arrived it turned out there was a second court right next door, and the coaches had the drills moving right along and it actually seemed like people were more tired from playing than tired of standing around.
Tennessee’s Michelle Piantadosi
After we just warmed up with a partner we jumped straight into three on three with permanent setters. Coaches were initiating with a rapid pace so there was no standing around. This was tons of fun because as we all know when we play “Back Court” everyone gets to hit - even us liberos. Next we had hitting lines attacking against six on the other side. The ball was initiated onto the hitting line side and than we six did dig-to-attack and played it out. After going through a couple times we added it with serve receive so that we were then serve receiving and practicing our offense.
Jalla teaches Cory some Zen-volley coaching techniques
We then began using the other gym for more than just warming up and had a serve and pass time, which later turned into pass to set to hit your pass. Next we counted off teams to play some three on three half court games. We had work-up matches that consisted of eight teams with five minute matches. The games lasted for about 45 minutes. We finished it off with a cool down stretch. Overall the practice stayed at a fast pace and allowed us to get many contacts to get all the kinks out; well some of them. It was designed for us to be able to show us as complete volleyball players and challenged us to do things that we normally would not do. For me it was hitting and blocking.
San Diego State’s Aspen McParkland
So far we are off to a great start and having tons of fun. We are on our way out to get something to eat and than going in to town to walk around. It should be a fun night to get to know all the girls and enjoy some more of Prague.
Editor’s notes: Kelli’s group left the training at about 5:30, but a group of 7 stuck around to play a little 45 minute match against our last 7 “late arrivers”. With 31 total people on tour today,
super-coaches JR and Doug did a great job getting everything into the swing of things, and I think we’ll see some good stuff tomorrow as everyone moves into formal matches. Also, after an authentic Czech dinner, most of the group practiced using the metro under Cory’s tutelage to get into the city center for a quick night view of the Old Town Square and Clock Tower. Hopefully they’ll all have plenty more time to enjoy the city during our 3 nights here. And hopefully they know how to use the public transit system here now safely to get around during free time.
On the German front, USC Braunschweig beat the German Junior National Team in 4 straight sets at the Brandys Sportscentrum: 25-20, 25-19, 25-21, and 25-18.
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