-courtesy of Tim Kelly

This year's tour was scheduled to be the longest and craziest ever. August 10 to September 17 = 37 days and we started with 13 people and about 10 "on deck" - scheduled to land between August 22 and 29 when we hoped to have space cleared out with recent signings.

For those that don't want to read this whole journal, I would give the overall list of players and placements here. This is as of October 4, 2000 and I hope that 1-2 more of these guys have jobs as time moves on:

I hope I didn't forget anyone or misspell any names, but I wasn't on much of the tour and this is the best I can come up with.

August 9, 2000
Tour leader Daniel Schultz and his buddies Phil Kerewich and Marcos Cordova checked into my gutted 2nd apartment in Munster, Germany after a week long stay in Amsterdam. We were ready for the masses the next day after renting van #1 and making sure that we had some matches and trainings set up.

The next day tour arrivals starting rolling down my street at about 10am. The boys were instructed to fly to Europe and catch the train to my town and bus to my house. No better way to get your feet wet! The arrivals continued well into the evening, but the core of the group headed up to Schuttorf.

Schuttorf is an annual stop on the tour in northern small-town Germany and they were looking for a setter and middle blocker as usual. We had a nice training with them and then enjoyed the Gyros and beer that they had prepared for our post game meal. Afterwards the team retired to the gym next door to sleep on mats and finish the cases of beer that Schuttorf left behind. Mark Lau and Doug McBride would eventually sign with Schuttorf. Many thanks to Diedrich Lammering and the FC Schuttorf team and staff.

The next morning, after a great breakfast, the team left for Zwolle, Holland. Zwolle was building a whole new team, and we were hoping to sell them 2-3 players. We had set up a deal with their management where we would train with them twice on Friday and also twice on Saturday. They put the team up for the night and had their trainer and staff in the gym to watch everyone and hopefully hire some players. This worked out great for us too as it gave everyone a chance to touch the ball a lot and get into the rhythm for the rest of the tour.

Daniel Schultz  2nd Year Veteran  from Zwolle, Holland  Fearless Tour Leader  and True Universal Player

Tour Leader Daniel Schultz had the team during these days (most days) and called a few times to let me know that the team wanted Slavomir Huba, Daniel (he'd played there the year before), Mike Rupp, and Aaron Shepardson. Zwolle didn't start training for a while so all of our players left and the four "chosen ones" had some time to think about their options.

Monday night we headed south a little for our first "official" match. This was the first tour that had any type of training involved so I was excited to see if it would pay off. It didn’t. Moers had already signed Robert Schildts (LMU ’00) and Raul Davila (Spanish National Team player) from me so we were excited to see how they were doing.

We played pretty well against a very mediocre Moers team (they were missing some players and it was very early in the preseason) but we lost and made a lot of mistakes. Moers showed interest in Slavomir Huba (as a Slovakian citizen he is not considered a foreigner in the German leauge) and he eventually signed there. We also had a great Italian dinner (many thanks to Heinz and Mr. Krivec for their continued hospitality) after the match and then the entire team retired to Robert’s 4 bedroom house to claim floor space for the night.

Mike Rupp and Corin Bemus were shipped off that morning to Portugal where they would eventually sign with FIAES just outside of Porto. This opened a little space on the tour for Lee Bennett and Tim Farmer to join us in Moers. They had been waiting "on deck" at Robert Schildts’ house for us to get rid of a few players.

Thursday morning the team packed into our van/station wagon combo for the 4-5 hour drive to Berlin. We had arranged a last minute match with Innova Post Berlin (thanks Martin) and we arrived just in time to hand them a 4-1 beating in a friendly contest during their training hours. German Champions SCC Berlin were training in the same gym and we were a little upset not to have a shot at them too. We didn’t have much time to see Berlin that night, so after a few beers and a hack/frisbee session in the parking lot we drove into the center to pick up Ted Groves (he flew in late after finishing the Puerto Rican season) and then retired to our cramped F1 rooms after a quick McDinner.

We were to arrive in Gorzow, Poland by 1pm on Friday morning, and since it was about a two hour drive from Berlin (+ border time) we got up early and hit the road. For back ground I’ll mention that the tour elite were driving a late model convertible while the boys were packed into a 9 passenger van and a station wagon. Keep in mind this is about 16 people total + bags for a 40 days trip, balls, video equipment, etc.

Upon arriving at the border we were first stopped at the German side. After about a half an hour of phone calls and bickering we were informed that the wagon and convertible couldn’t be driven out of Germany because they were "luxury" rentals without the proper insurance. We weren’t too happy about this decision, but we parked the two "illegal cars" on the German side of the Zoll and crammed everyone into the van. The it was across the 20 meters of no-mans land and up to the Polish crossing.

Now normally a stack of US passports and a volleyball team will get immediate entry into a country like Poland so we were a little shocked when we discovered we were in serious trouble. We had two Canadians with us (Veteran Mike Mulvey and James Sneddon) and our Japanese fire-plug (Katzuhiko Shimizu) and rather than hide all 3 passports and smuggle them in (as we did in the Czech Republic ’98 with a Korean, Canadian, and Lithuanian) we decided to show the Canadian passports and just try to sneak Katz in (Japanese have to pay huge entry fees and fill out tons of paperwork and Katz’ Polish isn’t that good – neither is his English). Well, they didn’t like that so we spent 2-3 hours getting Polish invitations faxed out, filling out triplicate after triplicate, and eventually paying $20/each and kissing the ass of every Polish border guard in the vicinity. An unbelievable waste of time and a serious pain in the butt, but we were in – and only 2-3 hours behind schedule.

We called Kryzstoff, our Polish host and guru, to let him know what was happening and he informed us that we would be OK. We eventually made it to the lovely Hotel Stilon, checked in (well, the boys checked into some "sporting" rooms in the gym) and then sat down for a quick lunch. We were scheduled to play the home team in the first match of a 4 team tournament and we didn’t have much time.