By Jess Dorrell (U. of Arkansas)
The first day in Maribor we had practice early in the morning with the
assistant coach for Nova KBM, Sebastian. Cory, Tim and Ron didn¹t come
because they wanted to let us figure out how to communicate with a foreign
coach on our own, which was really cool. After practice we went into town
and Maribor is such a small, quaint city with a population of about 150,000.
That night we got to watch an InterLiga match between Nova KBM and a team
from Hungary. The Slovenians killed them in about an hour and twenty
minutes. We had so much fun that night! Apparently, Tim & Cory are friends
with the president of the largest bank in Slovenia, so a pretty high society
person. He invited all of us to a series of different parties that were VIP
only. The first place was a small, very chill concert with all of the Obig
wigs¹ of Slovenia. The next stop was this awesome wine cellar, that was a
few hundred years old, underground, and about two miles long! We had people
serving us endless wine and, of course, drew plenty of attention to
ourselves, being the only American girls in the place of about 500 people.
We ended the night at a bar called Takos and danced all night! We were
excited to find out we didn¹t play until 5pm the next day.
Our last day consisted of relaxing and sleeping in, with the excitement and
exhaustion of the trip starting to wear on us. It was awesome because our
hotel patio opened up to the main ski slope (Pohorje) on the mountain and
the Women¹s Ski World Cup was going on. So we got to watch the skiers for
free right outside of our room.
We met up with the group and played in the same gym we watched the match in
the night before. I was on Ron¹s team for the night and we won one of our
games. We played a younger team, but these girls were amazing! We ended the
night taking a gondola up to the top of the mountain and having dinner at a
place called Mirc¹s, which was right next to the place Cory and his wife got
married this summer. It was so good and the restaurant overlooking the city
a night was so beautiful! Pictures don¹t even do the city justice. The
places just keep getting more and more gorgeous!
Volleyball Notes:
On the 10th we split into three teams. Jessica (author above) was on the
team that trained with Sebastian instead of playing. Another team went with
Tim and Cory to play Rese McNatt¹s (Missouri State ¹04) team in Ptuj, about
45 minutes away. Rese was placed on this Slovenian 1st League team from the
August Tour so it was good for the girls to have a chance to chat with her
about her experience. Ptuj won the 11am match 3-1. The other girls left at
3:30pm to drive about an hour up to Rogla (1500m and a ski resort on the
backside of the Pohorje/Julian Alps) and play against the second league team
of Zrece. It was quite an experience for most of the girls to walk through
the snow and ice to get to the game, but we won 4-0. We were also treated to
a nice buffet meal in the resort after the match. This group got back to
town too late to meet up with the rest of the delegation, but rumor has it
that most of them ended up sledding the night away on the Pohorje Mountain.
On the 11th all three teams played at the same time in the new Ljutski Vrt
(³Lukna²) hall in central Maribor. One team played OK Benedict, currently
the 4th place team in Slovenia, and finished the night at 2-2. Another team
played the Nova KBM Juniors Team and also split at 2-2. We put our best team
together (at least we tried to) to play against the Slovenian A2 Team, and
ended up having a pretty nice match. We won the first set with good defense
and transition play but then had some trouble keeping it together once we
started to sub. The low point of the match was blowing a 7-0 lead to be down
7-8 and eventually lose the set 25-17. We lost the match 1-3 and also lost a
5th ³friendly² game 13-15. It was good to see everyone in the hall working
hard at the same time, but its also evident that the trip is taking its toll
on some of the girls.
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