Today we woke up at 9:40am and went down to eat some breakfast at 9:45am. After eating, we went back to our rooms to relax and got ready for our second practice session at 12:00. We worked a lot on ball control and serve receive. Practice lasted about 2 hours. After that we walked back to our hotel and ate lunch. We relaxed for a few hours and prepared for our 6:00 match against Slovakia.
After arriving at the gym, we started our pre-game warm-up where the Slovakian team stole all of our volleyballs. We had to be assertive and go retrieve balls from the other team in order to warm-up properly. In the middle of this first game of the match, our ball control became a problem, particularly in serve receive. Consequently, we dropped the first game. After this disappointing loss we came back to win the second game. The match continued to be a struggle for both teams, as we dropped the third game and won the fourth causing a fifth decisive game. Despite the fact that our team had all the momentum going into the fifth game, we ended up losing causing the Slovakian team to win the match.
After this difficult loss, we realized that the highest we could finish in the tournament would be third. We walked back to the hotel, had dinner, and finally got to use the internet. Another fun activity that our team enjoys includes the game chubby bunny. We had to be in our rooms early due to our 10:00 start time the next morning.
This whole experience in Europe is very unique and fun. We all enjoy meeting international players and their teams. Our hotel is full of teams from many European countries. It is very interesting to eat with all the teams during meal time and spend time with them after matches. Many of us enjoy talking to the Croatian boys.
