AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE!

Over 60 women’s teams (and as many men’s teams) from all over the world flocked to South Australia for the first World Tour event in Australia since 1997 (in Melbourne). The local area was buzzing for the whole month in the lead up to the event.

One of the advantages of hosting an event in our country (and more importantly the first event) we got to train against many of the teams we will be competing with in the lead up to and in Beijing. So it was a great training atmosphere and we really enjoyed the opportunity to train against high quality opposition.

We moved into the Stamford Grand Hotel, even though Tam and I live 100m from it. We wanted to make sure it felt like a real event, and we weren’t just going down the local beach to train.

Being the first event for the all important 2008, nerves and anxiety was high. You could feel the expectations and dreams amongst the players as the Beijing Olympics draw close.

Our first match was against our Canadian friends (Sarah and Marie J ), and after losing to them in Perth a few weeks earlier, we were looking to avenge our loss. Our match was on centre court (as a matter of fact, they all were), another advantage of a home event! We played a great match, winning comfortably in 2 sets. This put us through to a 2nd round showdown against the new Brasilian combination (Ana and Shelda). They were too strong for us in this match, their serve and defense was faultless and they beat us in 2 sets. Now we were in the losers bracket….and had to “dance for our lives….” As they would say on “SO you think you can dance”

We would play 3 matches on the Friday, which is a tough ask at this level.
Italy - we won comfortably in 2 sets and our sideout and defence was great. USA ­ Wacholder/Turner (the team that came 2nd the week before) ­ we won in 2 sets, and this was a big win for us, our first win against a USA team as a pair, and the last time we played them was in Paris last year and we got smoked. So this was a great win! Germany ­ Pohl/Rau (the team we beat the week before) ­ this is where we came undone and ran out of gas. Physically drained we just couldn’t get across the line, and they beat us in 2 sets.

This left us in 9th position, and as I told the SA Advertiser, anywhere in the top 10 this year is a good result, the level of opposition is continuing to climb and a result like this keeps us well within reach of our goals in Beijing! So we go away with a few things to work on before heading to China at the end of April for round 2 in Shanghai.

Yours on the sand,

PS ­ Brasil took all the medals in the women with USA 4th!
PPS - It was so great to play in front of a home crowd again.
PPPS - The Australian Volleyball Federation should be proud of their efforts, it was an amazing event, especially for the first one, and the athletes loved it. A job well done by all. Thank you!