Time for a small update on things..

Regis University has been on a tour of Denmark and Sweden – they came, they saw and they conquered.!!

My good friends from Denver, Colorado came for a 10 days visit as part of their preparation for their season which starts this coming weekend.
I will spare you the details of the “tourist” part of the trip and just give you a recap of their volleyball performance here…

Day1 – Fortuna were taught a lesson in organisation and efficiency as they lost big in 3 fast sets on the night of Regis’ arrival.

Day2 – Brøndby were the opponent and again Regis proved to be the better of the two sides denying Brøndby any chance in the first 3 sets, but Brøndby showed strength and squad depth by winning the extra 4th set where both teams played some of their back-ups, but Regis took care of business in 5th set which they won pretty comfortably.

Day3 – Another trip to Copenhagen and a match against Frederiksberg. Regis won all 5 sets pretty easy and again a demonstration of organisation, great leadership and a strong level in ability to convert defensive plays into points made the big difference.

Day5 – The team had a day off from volleyball on Saturday just to prepare for 4 matches on Sunday against Skovbakken, Brøndby, Fortuna and Vordingborg on Sunday. All 4 matches was won pretty comfortably, but both Vordingborg and Brøndby managed to take a game off Regis to force them to a deciding 3rd set. In both matches Regis showed true colours in the 3rd set and won them with ease.

Day6 – travelling to Sweden to play Lindesberg and Örebro.

Day7 – It was time for my team to get their fingers stuck in the well-oiled Regis motor and even though we forced Regis to play some of the best they had done on the trip so far, we still lost the match 3-1. In the 5th set Regis won again without too much struggle.

Day8 – Örebro came to Lindesberg to play against Regis but unfortunately I was unable to see the match. However Örebro did perhaps the best job pushing Regis in their 3-1 loss. Örebro won the 1st game and kept pushing Regis in the rest of the match.

9 matches played in 8 days and with 9 wins as a result. The biggest difference between the Scandinavian teams and Regis seemed to be organisation and discipline which the Americans showed several levels higher class in than what we normally see. I would also like to bring out the Setter from Regis who as a Senior in college is at her highest level yet, and she really gave show of her skill in several occasions.

On behalf of Regis University I would like to thank all the teams in both Denmark and Sweden for picking up weapons and fighting… You were all great hosts.


Back to reality…

After Regis went home last Thursday I have been back in Lindesberg and picked up the work on my own team and all our preparations.

Pre-season has picked up the pace and we have been on our first trip. The team is pretty set for now, unfortunately we lost one of our middles, Sara T., so we are in need of a middle blocker pretty badly.

Our first trip took us to Denmark where we played against Hamburg and Fortuna in Odense. 2 matches Saturday and 2 matches Sunday would be our first real tests on squad depth, top and bottom level and how resilient we are as a team at this point.

We lost both matches against Hamburg but managed to take a set from them and pushed them in a couple more.
Fortuna has still a long way to go before reaching the level that brought home double gold last year, but the girls work hard and the new coach seems set on making it work, so I am sure they will get there. In this weekend however, they had no real chance against neither teams and we won 3-0, 3-0 in those 2 matches.

During the 4 matches we showed a really high top level, but it also came to show that when we are pushed consistently we struggle to push back, and it is still obvious that we are a new team with 8 new players compared to last year so organisation and chaos walk hand in hand…:0)

The girls all work really hard at practice and we are all very mindset on getting to a high level before our first big test which will be Nordic Championship group stage. Lady luck had a sense of irony when the groups were found. We are playing against Team BK(Iceland), Stavanger(Norway) and HolteIF(Denmark). It will be a very special experience to play against Holte again. Many friends on the other side of the net and it will be a very emotional match for me in so many ways. I am sure we will face a top tuned Holte team who would love nothing more than a chance to pay back for the lost Championship finals last season, but of course we will do everything we can to make sure that exactly that will not happen.
The Norwegian champions from Stavanger have 2 players on their team who I have signed in my job as an agent, and one of them, Robyn Devlin is a close friend of mine on top of that. All in all a very tough group where I expect a full weekends work to promote to the final round which is a big goal for us this season.


That’s all for now, we continue building on the “team” in the team, and we have our eyes on the prize…

Michael

“It takes a lot of hard work to be able to sit back and be satisfied… we don’t sit back because we are not satisfied”