So much has happened since our victory in the Cayman Islands! Here's a quick recap:
We went directly to the next stop on the NORCECA tour in Boca Chica, Dominican Republic. We had some solid games in pool play but had a tough match in the quarter finals vs Mexico and ended up with a 5th place finish. Disappointing after such a successful previous tournament, but there was lots to learn from this experience, stuff that has made us a stronger team now having gone through that.
We were home for two weeks, where we continued to train hard, and get organized for our trip to China. This included getting our Chinese visas and lots of food (camping meals, protein bars, oatmeal, nuts, etc). Our suitcases were pretty heavy!
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| Overlooking some of the courts at the Fuzhou venue. |
The first stop on the FIVB World Tour was Fuzhou, China. It was a new stop, somewhere we hadn't been before and it was actually really nice. On the first day we participated in the Qualification tournament. We had to win our one match against a team from the Netherlands to earn a spot in the Main Draw. After getting over some nerves in the first set, we eventually won (18-21, 21-18, 15-7). This put us in a pool with 3 other teams. We played Brazil and another team from the Netherlands on the first day of Main Draw action. We lost both, definitely not playing our best, but still managing to do some good things.
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It was especially tough for me that day because I heard about my grandfather passing away between matches. I'm very close with my grandparents so this was tough being so far away from home, missing the funeral and not being with my family. I like to think my grandpa was looking out me for though, because the next day we beat Kazakhstan to make it out of our pool. And not only that, the Russian team we were supposed to play in the first round of playoffs pulled out due to an injury, so we advanced to the second round. Eventually we lost to the top team from Italy, taking a 9th place finish. A career best!
This was a super emotional tournament, but one I'll remember fondly, knowing my grandpa is up there with front row seats to my games. Love you grandpa, miss you.
...Ok, before I start crying again, back to volleyball! After Fuzhou, we flew to Shanghai for the Grand Slam event, which meant there were more points and prize money to be earned! But first… qualification. Grrrr…
Well, we took down Spain in a 2-set heated battle, then beat Columbia in the final round of qualification to earn Main Draw again! We were pumped about that!
Again we had a rough start in pool play, losing to a Chinese team and the same Netherlands team we faced last week in the main draw. But we managed to pull out a win against a Czech team to advance to pool play! Here we lost a tight battle against a team from Brazil. We fought hard, but just couldn't manage to keep control of the game in the third set.
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| Mav and Sam playing China on centre court in Shanghai. |
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| Jamie out-jumping the competition, as usual. |
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| What a game, the lines people were SO into it! |
Overall, we are very pleased with our performance over the past two weeks. It feels awesome to qualify, and even sweeter to win a couple games in the Main Draw. This gives us confidence for the rest of our season, we're ready to keep working hard and improving our game!
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