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Day 3, June 10, 2005
By Brigitte Slack, University of Alabama
So, last night we had a night out on the town. We went out to dinner as a team, without the coaches, and found ourselves at a small Italian restaurant called Broccolino. The food was amazing and I think everyone had enough to eat seeing as, for once, no one got dessert! It was only a few short blocks from our hotel, so when everyone was finished we walked back and called it a night.
Volleyball-wise, toady was yet another eventful day. For starters, on the way to the gym our bus broke down! We had to walk the rest of the way, but hey, nothing like a great warm up! Once we were there, we were ready to go with just a few short laps and a quick stretch. With a slow start, we finally got on our feet towards the end of game one. Even though we ended up losing, we came back and won game two. We had found our rhythm only to switch things up once again.
For game three we switched setters and it was the same thing. We dropped game three but came back with a determination to be on top at the end of game four. And that’s exactly what we did! We played great as a team and things were finally starting to click and relationships had been established defensively. In the fifth and final game, both teams battled back and forth, neither one of us ready to quick just yet. But in the end Argentina came out on top with a final score of 24 to 22. Needless to say it was a really exciting game. Everyone played great and I can’t wait until we get to play them again.
Day 3 continued
Kevin and Santiago’s Team vs. the ARG Youth Team By Jessie Nevitt, University of Cincinnati
The two teams swapped setters for the matches today so the hitters had a small change to get comfortable with. Luckily we are all adaptable and we began connecting with the setters by the end of game one. Unfortunately we lost the first game, but we treated it as a warm-up game to number two. However, game two didn’t go in our favor either and we ended up losing 19-25. By game three we had all warmed up and decided we would kick it in to gear and start playing our game. We won 25-17 and looked great doing it. Everything was clicking and both our defense and offense were great. Game four didn’t quite work out as well for us. We played well, but Argentina played very well. We kept it close the whole game but lost 22-25 so the match went to Argentina 3-1. We decided to keep going and game five was a breeze for us. If we hadn’t been playing our best earlier then we definitely were in game five. We dominated at the net and our passing and digging were fantastic. We beat Argentina 15-7.
After the match we had lunch in the cafeteria of their training center there where the Argentinean players and coaches eat every day.
Then we had a few free hours back near the hotel and at night we took our first taxi ride to the Men’s World League Volleyball match, Argentina vs. Greece. It went to four games, with Greece coming out as the winner. It was two hours of intense volleyball.
After the match we walked to a pizzeria for dinner and ate pizza until they eventually quit bringing more out of the kitchen. After dinner, we continued our walk back to the hotel to pack up our things and get some sleep before our 8-hour drive the next day.
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