Sibillini 2007
Entry #5 - Comunanza Day 3
July 3
By Beth Karpiak, University of Michigan

Greetings from the beach…in Italy! Today began with a very early rise, but despite our lack of sleep, the day turned out to be a lot of fun.  We woke up at around 7:30 and got right on a bus with a team from Hungary and headed to the beach. Although I was looking forward to an interesting cultural experience and exchange with the Hungarian girls, most of them were finding creative ways to sleep on a bus. After about an hour and a half of winding turns up and down the mountains we arrived at a very cute beach town where the streets are lined with open-air restaurants and pizzerias.  We immediately found chairs and began soaking up the sun along with the beautiful views, but it wasn’t long until a lot of us were sleeping once again.  After a short nap we ventured out into the Adriatic Sea for some Italian style bathing and swimming. Many of the girls tested their bargaining skills with the vendors that walk up and down the beach. Some girls bought jewelry and others bought purses, but we all decided to get henna tattoos and I, along with a few others, personally opted for the skull and cross-bones.  Many of the other girls kept it simple with small flowers.

The day seemed about perfect, but we couldn’t leave the beach without challenging some of the other teams in a casual beach tournament.  Kerry, Jessica, and I made a pretty good team but we couldn’t manage to pull off a victory against the girls from Serbia.

We were then treated to a lunch of pasta and fruit. After lunch we hopped in a van with our new friend and driver Massimo. He doesn’t understand much English, and in return, we hardly know any Italian, but we manage to make things work with excessive hand gestures and facial expressions.  When we got back to the monastery we rinsed off the salt and got ready for our match.

Tonight we played against OOK Lazarevac from Serbia.  These are the girls who we met and exchanged t-shirts with the night before. The match started off very well and we got right on track with our serving. However, after a few long runs they gained their composure and started hitting some smart shots that we were not really expecting. After a few points, we were able to counter act their offense with some changes in our blocking.  The girls on the Serbian team ranged in age anywhere from 14 to 21. We were really impressed with how good the young girls were.  We won the first game by a pretty large margin, but we were challenged the next two.  None-the-less, team Third Degree came out victorious and was treated to gelato.

           
Team Volleyhut’s match, by Nikki Jagd (UCLA)

After dinner we arrived at the court a little early so we decided to practice and do some serve receive before we warmed up. That went well and it was nice to get some repetitions in before we played especially because we haven’t played on that court yet. The court was easier to dive on and a more intense atmosphere than the court up in the mountains in Montemonaco especially because more people attended. The match began and we started off slow and inconsistent but as the match went on we got used to our surroundings and felt more comfortable playing and began to play more aggressively instead of holding back. It’s really fun playing with this group of girls because everyone is very intense and eager to win but at the same time we have fun. We won the first game and during the second game we were down by 10 points but caught up and won, then ending the match in the third game when we won pretty easily. Besides the shaky start with mistakes and sloppy play we pulled it together towards the end because of our intensity and energy. Paula and Val always have great input and keep us focused but also have fun and relieve us of any stress that we put on ourselves. All in all, it was a win but we all feel that we could have played a lot better so we are excited to play tonight against Rudar Plejvjia, the team from Montanegro.

For more information, and some great photos, please see the past years journals: