Day 6

It was the first official day of the tournament and we couldn't have been more excited. We played Nova KBM from Maribor, Slovenia (most of the girls are on the Slovenian Junior National Team) and they were definitely a pretty good team. (UPDATE: Slovenia went on to fall to Italy in the semi-finals of the tournament 2-3. They really were a great team!)

Walking over to the gym with our competition...not something you see everyday! How cool!

So exciting to play with these girls

They were all so nice!

Next up was Hungary. Tonight was the night we had played our best volleyball yet! We took the first game 25-21 and it was so exciting. The atmosphere on the court was amazing and we were gelling and flowing and playing awesome volleyball. We did just as well in the next two games, it just didn't go our way. When you looked at the stats, you would think we won all three games! It was still refreshing to know that we were finally clicking. During this match, however, I started experiencing back/butt pains that I have been trying to battle for a year now. They are on and off and I never can tell when it will act up but tonight, they were definitely on. In order to preserve myself for the future (fall season at school is just around the corner), our coach thought it was wise to have me cut back a few notches, rest, and not push it. Tomorrow, we will meet a Croatian setter who will help us out and give me a chance to save myself (I was the only setter on the team). It was really disappointing to know that I couldn't give the team what they needed and frustrating to have this issue hold me back. But, this fall season at school is really important to me and in the long run, I would never forgive myself if I put myself in a position to be seriously injured on this trip. But still, I couldn't stand the feeling of letting down my team. It was tough. We'll see what tomorrow brings! Time to rest up.

Here is a snippet of match play from earlier today: