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Days 10 & 11, June 17 & 18, 2005
By Tim Kelly
In the interest of getting the journal finished and posted I will again fire off a journal entry here for the girls…
Day 10 saw us wake up in Santa Fe to a bit of a dreary day. It’s sort of a shame to be in Argentina during their winter, but we’ve been fortunate for the most part as far as the weather has been concerned. We were leaving for Buenos Aires at 10:00am so I doubt that anyone got into the city again. Our bus left on time (well, I’m sure it was at least 10:15 by the time we left, which is on time for this trip) and I think everyone was fast asleep within minutes. Around 1:00pm we pulled up to a "lunch-counter" for some pretty good (but greasy) sandwiches and burgers and hit the road again about an hour later. We are not a fast group, but the country doesn’t really facilitate speed so I guess it’s all working out. We pulled back into the street in front of our Hotel Dolmen in Buenos Aires at about 5:00, at least 2 hours later than planned.
The staff had some "Coaching Development" work to attend to, and left the hotel for a wonderful steak dinner at about 8:30pm. It was nice to wrap up the tour with our hosts Guillermo "Willy" Orduna (the National Team Coach) and his wife, Horacio (Pichu) di Scuilla (our guide and organizer), and Oscar de Sarro (the ARG Team Manager) in such a fashion. They have been so great to us all trip, and it was nice to finally sit down and be able to chat at a meal that started before 1:00am! There was the typical shirt swapping to start the meal, and a ton of Santiago-induced heckling throughout the meal. Hopefully this great group will have a chance to get together again for a similar tour next year.
The girls on the other hand were off to "The Tango Show". The staff was lucky enough to have Carla, Ailyn and Clarisa come accompany the girls.
These three cuties from the Youth National Team showed up at the hotel around 8:00pm to help our girls get into their 5 taxi cabs and head to the Teatro Liceo across town for the 9:30pm show. Rumor has it that the girls had a great time and that the show was entertaining and fun. There was some singing (which was in Spanish and therefore hard to follow in the words of Ms. Stalzer) but dancing and a good time had by all. (Pato, lo siento mucho que no podia venir al fin.)
A late-night group dinner followed for the next few hours and from there I’ve had trouble finding out how the evening ended. No doubt a group made their way back (exhausted I’m sure) to the hotel after curfew if I know any of these players after the last 10 days…
(Ailyn, Carla, y Clarisa: Muchisimas gracias para acompanar nuestras chicas!
Imagino que eran totalmente cansadas despues de su viaje duro, y me alegro que podian estar con ellas!)
Many of the girls from the YNT had headed home from San Carlos as they have a week off before resuming preparation for the Youth World Championships, but we were lucky to have our three local girls here in town. It’s difficult to express how great it was to see them (17’s years old) show up in separate taxis to our hotel lobby and immediately greet each and every person in our delegation with a kiss. Their maturity and openness is hopefully a lesson to our group and I hope that our girls appreciate just how cool it is to have friends 4000+ miles away.
Day 11 started with a 10:00am breakfast back on floor "EP" at the Dolmen. We said good-bye to Tom and Tess (early flights back to Colorado via Panama City…) and then packed everyone else’s bags into 2 day-use rooms. Most flights from Buenos Aires to the USA leave between 8:30pm-10:00pm so we all had a free day in the big city. It was free time across the board, and then we met in the lobby to leave at 5:30pm.
As I write this, our girls are in the air on their way home. I just wrote them a team letter (with a fully fried brain, mind you all) expressing my gratitude for having had this group here. This was undoubtedly the most brutal travel schedule I have been involved in during my 9 years of running tours. Pichu and I figured out this morning that we spent no less than 40 hours on that #$%!* bus in 6 days, and that was with 6 matches per team (plus the 2 in Buenos Aires before we got on the bus) and only 8/9 players on each team. Considering that we had a libero and 2 setters per team, that is a ton of playing time. Add to that our coaches’ propensities to allow the games to go 5 in almost every case (Kevin’s team played 38 sets in 8 consecutive days) and the fact that our average start times were ~8:15pm (1st Match) and ~11:00pm (2nd Match) and you’ve got some kind of schedule. These girls weren’t used to eating "merienda" (=~breakfast) at 5:30pm or "cena" (dinner) at 1:30am before they got here, but after 10 days on Pichu’s timetable they sure are now!
Without actually having been on this tour it would be hard to truly appreciate what these girls went through (and the coaches too, don’t worry, I’m not forgetting about you gentlemen) and they did it without a single "queja"
(complaint). I was and am shocked to think about this, and even more so when I remember our sketchy rooms in Villaguay, the 3+ hours we spent waiting in the bus in front of the hotel in Cordoba before the bus finally got rolling, and the time the bus broke down and we had to walk to our first (of only 2) training. What a great bunch of girls. What a great delegation to lead through this wonderful country.
The coaches touched on what a great experience this was - both from a volleyball and cultural standpoint – so I won’t rehash that here. Instead, I’ll use my last few words to thank everyone that made this tour so great:
The Girls: As I mentioned, our players were wonderful. We meet a lot of great kids on these tours, but this group shines as a team. They worked together, enjoyed each other, and did a great job persevering and playing hard. They also impressed me with their interest in their opponents as friends and with their ability to enjoy trying to communicate with them. Thank you.
The Coaches: A wonderful staff. No need to even mention their level and experience with this group, but I want to thank these guys for hanging in there during the many delays, and even more so for impressing upon our young ladies how lucky they were to have their many experiences on this trip. Sorry about the lack of wine on this trip fellas!
Team Argentina: The 24 young ladies that we traveled with had to be every bit as beat as I felt, but they never showed it on the court. They seemed to really love playing the game, and more impressively, playing the game together.
What Coach Orduna has going with this group is enviable. I want to thank them for being so gracious with our girls, and for putting up with Santiago teasing them mercilessly each and every day! It was great to see them enjoying our company, and even greater to see them dance. They took good care of our girls and were a joy to be around. Hopefully we can find some hosts for them in the USA in the coming years. Muchas gracias a todas las jugadoras Argentinas, y suerte al equipo sub-17 cuando el viaje a Macau!
Pichu and Roberto: We couldn’t be luckier than to have Pichu running the show for us. This guy works his ass off from early morning to the latest hours of the night (or should I say morning to morning?) and is always making sure that everything is just as it should be for us. He worked hard to solve every mystery (missing watches, sweatshirts, and passports included) and made sure that we were getting the best service everywhere we went. Every detail was covered on this trip, and I couldn’t be happier to have Pichu as our guardian down here. Many thanks also to Roberto Battaglia of Acuerdo Viajes for his efforts in getting us such a great bus, wonderful hotels, and on-time rides to and from the airport. It just seems like everyone is looking out for us down here.
Our Hosts: Starting with Willy Orduna and the Oscars in Buenos Aires, we have been blessed with wonderful hosts in each city or gym in which we’ve played.
They may not have the facilities that we have, but they fill in the gaps with generosity and friendship, and during the games: fans. We had phenomenal crowds in each of the 6 cities that we visited. The numbers were in the 800-1500 range, but never a seat in the house. These were smaller gyms in smaller cities, but packed with loyal, passionate, knowledgeable fans that weren’t afraid to make noise. Muchisimas gracias to all the host teams, cities and clubs: Rio Cuarto, Cordoba, San Francisco, Parana, Villaguay, and San Carlos. I don’t know that I could pick a favorite night or venue from the list, and I hope to be able to visit them all again next summer!
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