Day 11 - Pordenone & Slovenia - Thursday July 20, 2006
By Curt Glesmann, Northern Lights Club Director 

Our last full day in Europe is turning out to be an exciting one.  After a late night we let the players sleep in and then relax and walk around the city for a couple of hours this morning. 

This was in preparation for a special match this evening.   Originally we were scheduled to play a match with the Air Force base teams, but due to the heightened level of security because of the events in the Middle East the past week it was cancelled.  So Cory placed a few phone calls and suddenly we found ourselves with a match being played in Slovenia against the Croatian Youth and Junior National Teams.   They were in training for the European Youth Championships, and this was just what they needed to get a break from the regular training routine.  So we hopped in the bus and drove 1.5 hours to Slovenia and the Croatia team drove 3 hours to meet us. 

We arrived in Koper, a seaside town just across the border, and went to a nice new sport hall.  We were suppose to have two nets set up, but there was only one.  So in the normal tradition of European VB, we adapted and changed our schedule.  Front Range played the Jr National team first in a good match.  Unfortunately they lost in 3 games.  We played the Youth National team next, and the first game was very close with NL winning 25-23.  The 2nd game we won 25-15, and the third was 25-19.    We asked the coach if he wanted to play another game and he said yes, so we played a 4th game with a completely different line up.  We lost 25-15, but it was a good game. 

After we finished playing we had a dinner of pizza, but the place making them was so small they could only turn out about two pizzas every 15 minutes.  While they were making pizza’s we took the team down to the harbor area, and they decided to jump in the Adriatic sea.   It was warm and fun they said.   

After we got back from the swimming trip they still didn’t have enough pizzas done, so we left them for the Croatia team to take home and we piled into the bus.  Cory called ahead to Pordenone for Pizza to be ready, and when we got back there were 20 pizza’s waiting for us. 

This was another great day, and the trip to Slovenia to play the Croatian’s was definitely worth the time.