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Cory
Solomon - True Universal Player
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Day
9 - Wien to Maribor
-
Cory Solomon (BIP Management)
Another beautiful day greeted the tour this morning as we left Wien to
make the short drive to Maribor, Slovenia. Slovenia is part of the former
Yugoslavia, however since its independence it has become very westernized
and prosperous. To my knowledge, this is the first team of Americans to
play in Slovenia for a long time. We were greeted at the border by Igor,
the assistant coach of the Maribor team and all around great guy. He speaks
very fluent English and German and is finishing up is degree this year.
I must admit that I love coming to Maribor. The volleyball people in this
town are so friendly and willing to accommodate you in any manner. After,
the lunch the team went site seeing and Dave, Igor and myself went to
a small café along the river and talked about a lot of things. That night
we played the Maribor Juniors team coached by Sandi. Sandi is one of the
trio of Slovenian coaches that have really welcomed us to this country.
His team was small and young, but very well coached. They dug every ball
we hit at them and made it a great match. In the end we won in five, but
I enjoyed watching the attitude and work ethic of Sandi's young team.
After the match we all went out to a Mexican place called "Takos". It
was great to eat "chips and salsa", although not like the states, and
sit around and talk. One of Radman's (Radovan Gacic is our #1 man in Maribor
and the assistant coach of the National Team) friends was a local D-jay
and he invited everyone over to his club for dancing. Its amazing the
group of young men that 11 American women can attract. By the team we
reached his club we must have had over 20 young Slovenian men following.
The team stayed out late dancing, until around 5:00 am I believe, but
I left around 2:00am to head home. Maia Gustin joined us tonight and it
was nice to talk with her. If you remember, she is from Maribor but plays
for Hawaii. I think she was real excited to show her town to a group of
Americans. It was neat to see her pride in the place that she calls home.
She loves it here, but is excited to return to Hawaii.
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Tim,
Radman, and Igor - Africa here we come!
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Day
10 - Maribor
- JoAnna Papageorgiou (Bowling Green)
I arrived in Maribor around one in the afternoon after visiting Novo Mesto,
Slovenia, to check out the team and city and living situations there.
The team had gone out the night before and they were just waking up when
I arrived. This hotel in Maribor was the nicest one we've stayed at, in
my opinion. There was a hair dryer built into the wall in the bathroom!
How nice! Just like the US! We didn't have to mess around with the plugs
and differences in energy frequency from the outlets. One wonderful thing
about Slovenia is that most of the people speak English and so it's easy
to communicate with people and you feel much less helpless. Also, there
are a good number of television and radio stations in English. It also
seems like the people are so friendly and smiley and open to meeting you.
Also, the water is OK to drink. It seems that Slovenia would be a fairly
easy place to assimilate and adjust to. It's also beautiful. I got to
see a lot of it on my visit to Novo Mesto, but also a couple of girls
from the team went up to a mountain to sight see with a guy that they
met at the bar the night before. A little after I arrived in Maribor,
we ate lunch at the hotel. I also think that food-wise this was the nicest
hotel we've stayed at. We had a basket of bread promptly at every meal
and water without gas!!!!! We ate salad, fried chicken, potato wedges,
and an apple desert. It was pretty good. We then had a few hours until
we were to be at the gym (which was right across the street) at five for
the match against the Maribor team. We all decided to go downtown and
check out the stores. They had this wonderful ice cream stand that we
hit and then we split off into separate stores. The prices were not too
different from the US, but they were overall cheaper. For example, Hugo
boss perfumes and colognes were half of the price of what you would pay
in the US, but shoes were only a little cheaper. After not finding anything
worth buying, we walked back to the hotel, which was only about a ten
minute walk. There were a lot of people walking and there was a line that
separated a bike lane from the walking lane. I learned this the hard way
by almost getting hit by a cyclist. We then waited in the bus to head
over to the gym for about five minutes before we were told that it was
only across the street. The gym was pretty nice. It was a facility that
you might compare to that of a smaller division one college gym. This
match was highly publicized in Maribor, so our coaches told us to be prepared
and play well. I think the consecutive days of playing and the late night
of clubbing the night before took affect as our team looked really sluggish.
The team on the other side was nearly the exact team we played out match
against the Slovenian National Team. We had beaten them in Brno, but due
to us not being quite at our peak, we lost the first three games. They
were all close games. We played one more for some reason, and we won that
one by a good amount. They put in their reserve players and also I think
that the European style of play is that if the game doesn't count for
anything, they don't care and won't really try very hard. I was told this
is why the coaches like the players from the US, because they play with
that "American fire" and heart. I do see a difference between US and European
volleyball. The fan turnout was small, but Maribor did have a cheering
section, and I was yelling and screaming for the US the entire match.
This Maribor team is probably the top team in the Slovenian league. They
were pretty good. Again, they had nearly all of the players from the Slovenian
National Team, including a girl that plays in a university in Hawaii during
the school year. After the match we were confronted by the "weird fan"
of the Maribor team. But the assistant coach for Maribor said that he's
OK and that in America, everybody's weird, right? Well, I guess, but this
guy wanted all of our autographs (he spoke good English), and he pleasured
us with his impression of Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue" and some Brittany
Spears jokes along with excessive conversation. He was quite a character.
I was trying to talk to the Bojan (the Slovenian volleyball manager that
took me to Novo Mesto) to say goodbye and thank you for the wonderful
trip, but this fan kept jumping into our conversation asking if I knew
any other Buddy Holly songs. He was rather funny, but he followed us to
the hotel and I was relieved when he went off to pursue Dave (our coach)
instead of following me to the rest of the players. Anyway, after dinner
we all passed out pretty early. A great day in Maribor.
Days 11
and 12 - Maribor to Salzburg
-
Cory Solomon
We said our sad good-bye to all our very good friends in Maribor. Sandi,
Radovan, and Igor all greeted us a very pleasant farewell. I think Tim
and I will always try to bring tours through Slovenia. We traveled through
Austria on our way to Salzburg with a short stop in Linz. Katie Almquist
left two days ago for an "official visit" with the Linz team. They would
really like to have her for next year. In fact many of these players will
have choices to make in the short future. Jen Sanchez is being highly
recruited by Paulo in Portugal, Kristy Kierulff and Michelle Frazier are
being looked at by two teams in Lisbon and Austria, JoAnna must decide
if she wants to return to Slovenia and Brandy must think hard about going
to Italy or Spain. Tough choices but great choices for the talented young
women on this tour. Salzburg was fun as it's a beautiful city. The coach
from Innsbruck drove over to watch our team and she was very interested
in couple of the players. Chris Kosty, Brandy's boyfriend, re-joined the
tour as he is trying to get a job with the Salzburg team. I hope it works
out for him as I think he is a bright young man. We beat the Salzburg
team four out of five games and had a wonderful meal with them. I sat
by two 18-year-old players, and they had so many questions about America.
One of them was taking her driving test tomorrow and was very nervous.
After dinner everyone went out one last time to have a great time before
leaving in the morning. It's a two-hour drive to Munich as we need to
leave at 5:30 am so most of the players just decided to stay up all night
and sleep on the bus and plane. Tours are always full of mixed feelings
when you say good-bye. You have just spent 24 hours a day with all these
wonderful people and you realize you might never see them again. You are
excited to return to your normal life, but sad to see everyone go. This
tour might rank as the best tour I have ever been associated with. The
Spring Cup provided an International Volleyball experience that was unmatched
in past tours. It was great to see 12 women come together so fast and
win as a team. The additions of Germans, Poles, and Czech and Slovak players
each day added so much culture to our team. One day Mora Kanim counted
that we had eight nationalities represented in our group. We were truly
a small United Nations. We had Americans, Canadians, and coaches from
Norway, Portugal and players from Brazil, Germany, Poland, Slovakia and
the Czech Republic as part of our team. It was really a great cultural
experience. So many friends were made with teams from Sweden, Finland,
Croatia, Slovenia, Denmark and the former Yugoslavia that I can't help
believe all players involved did not learn something about someone and
another country. Finally, there are so many people to thank for the success
of this tour: Jirka Honzik (our lord in the Czech Republic), Crazy Frank
Koch (our usual bus driver), Dave Best (our Head Coach from the University
of Montana) and the wonderful players involved. As the team left I reflected
on the reason why I left coaching and moved to Europe - A good choice
on my part.
Thanks to All !
Note from Tim:
was present only for the first 6 days of the tour - in Brno for the
Spring Cup - and I agree with Cory that this was surely the best team
we've ever had. The Spring Cup is an annual Tournament in Europe for the
National Teams that are not in European Qualifications of some sort. It
is the biggest tournament of the quadrennial for many of the smaller nations
like England, Denmark, Finland, Slovenia, Croatia, etc. and was a phenomenal
chance for our players to actually play in an international setting as
an official delegation. Just think for a moment that this "team" of American
girls competed (and well) against 6 actual National Teams and walked away
with a 2-5 record (with several of the losses coming in 2-3 or 1-3 losses
with very close set scores) after having known each other for a total
of 24 hours on a bus! Unbelievable. Add to this the fact that they were
being trained by the Norwegian National Team Coach (Tore Aleksander) and
a top Portuguese Coach (Paulo Cunha) in double day type trainings AND
they had 2-5 other different young foreign players rotating in and out
of practice each and every day. Our delegation swelled from 21 to 34 people
at one point during this week! Our Head Coach Dave Best truly did a great
job keeping this group together and motivated and I can't thank each and
every player (American or German or Polish or Czech, etc.) enough for
their hard work and great attitudes.
Next year the Spring Cup is in Croatia and we will be again entering the
tournament and trying to bring the best possible team. Maybe we can even
walk out with a winning record next year.
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