Week Three: Protecting Our Barn

After what was a disappointing showing in Orkelljunga, all of us were anxious to get back out onto the court to set the ship right again. Unfortunately for Hylte, they were the ones that had to bear the brunt of our frustration on Saturday back home in Tierp. As Coach Andy would say, "We must protect our barn."

Hylte was a team that was coming off a very rough loss last weekend, including losing one game 25-10, so we knew if we did our thing we should have no problem going home with three points. Game one started off well and set a tone for the match that they just couldn't hang with. We jumped out early and controlled the first game, holding a 21-14 lead late but we let them back into it and ended up winning by just two at 25-23. We knew we had to buckle down and kill any momentum they had gained and we did just that with a dominant game two victory, 25-13.


Hylte is a team that relies heavily on two players, a middle and their opposite. We did a great job serving, much better than last weekend, and for the most part their passing failed them and they had very few chances to even set their middles. When they did set him the connection just wasn't there. We also did a great job shutting down their opposite, including a rally where I dug him three times in a row, a career highlight of mine. He did finish with 11 kills but at crucial times we stopped him.


Game three was an almost exact repeat of game one. We jumped out to leads of 8-5 and 16-11 at the technical timeouts but we didn't put the nail in the coffin when we needed to. We ended up winning the game 25-22 on the last of Eric Simon's three blocks on the day. While a victory is always a plus, we need to be able to play all the way through matches without taking our foot off the gas if we're going to make some noise come playoff time.

Overall, it was a successful day for me, I played really well again. Nine kills and a block gave me my first career double digit point match, so I'm headed in the right direction. A couple other results, including previously undefeated Sollentuna losing to Falkoping, left us in a good spot after the three points we gained in our victory. Hopefully we get the film from that match soon and can repeat that result next Tuesday when we play at Sollentuna (nine days seems like forever until our next match!).

Of course, we had good reason to celebrate so a bunch of us hit the town in Uppsala for a good time. It was a much needed escape from the walls of this apartment and we will definitely be making the 30 minute train ride more often in the next six months, hopefully for more celebrations.


Talk to you soon! And if we don't already talk, add me on Skype (dan.fabry)! I'm on basically all the time, at least in between episodes of "Mad Men."

Week Two: My Debut

So after being forced to stand on the sidelines during the season-opening sweep last Sunday I couldn't wait to get in the action this weekend. But first came a week of practice, watching "Mad Men," eating Swedish pancakes and a six-hour van ride to Orkelljunga (sound it out). The ride wasn't that bad since I had "The Other Guys" loaded onto my iPod and we had a traditional all-you-can eat Swedish meatball dinner at a truck stop.

The week crawled by and finally match time came around in "The Shoe Box," as our coaches call the tiny Orkelljunga gym. After an overly lengthy warm up and a pretty ridiculous home team entrance that included a smoke machine and one of those flashing red lights that they use for goals at hockey games I was ready to play in my first pro match. It was basically all downhill from there...

While the gym was small, even smaller than our home gym, it really made for a great home court advantage for Orkelljunga. They really packed the place, well over the actual number of seats they had. Add to that the kids beating on drums and blowing those horrible horns from the World Cup and it really was us 13 against a whole town. The atmosphere at these matches is nothing like I've ever played in. The crowd was very into it and got loud after every big play they made and then dead silent whenever we would make one (which wasn't often). Also, I could do without the 10 seconds of dance music in between every single point. Lady Gaga is the last thing I need in my ear after missing a play.

From the beginning of the match we knew we were in for a battle. In both games one and two we fell down to early big deficits, including 8-1 in the second. It was a frustrating match to say the least. We definitely weren't prepared for the speed of their offense and were really helpless to stop it. The match ended in a 3-0 sweep to the bad guys, with game three being the only one that was even competitive at 25-23. Overall, I played well offensively and led the team in points but my blocking was pretty disappointing.

We were all pretty disappointed by the effort, which didn't make the six hours of driving home any easier. Even the traditional Swedish comfort food of Big Macs and fries didn't help much.

These first five weeks will be absolutely crucial for how we end up doing this season. After beating the defending champs last weekend we played the runners up this weekend. This week we are back at home against a decent Hylte team. Hopefully our crowd will push us back into the win column. After that we play a good Sollentuna team and then first place Falkenberg. We need to get our game together quick.

Well it's off to practice for me now to work on that, but for now I'll leave you with a picture of one of our neighbors walking his cat (yes, on a leash and everything).



The cat pretty much sits there and stares, even he doesn't know what's going on.

Week One

So day six in Sweden has come and gone and I still don't know how exactly to start my season blog so I figure I'll just start with how I ended up here in Tierp.

Last season I came up empty in my attempts to find a team to play for myself so I enjoyed a year back living at home just outside of Chicago. I got a bartending gig, coached an 18-year-old club team, and worked on the golf game (it's not too promising), all the while going to a personal athletic trainer to stay in my old college shape (big thanks to Justin, Mike, Roger and all the guys and girls at WCS/Gattone Sports Performance in Buffalo Grove, IL). This year I took a different approach, however. I ended up going on a professional volleyball scouting tour through an agency called Bring It Promotions. The entire tour took place in Spain in August. It began in Madrid for five days from there we moved on to a small town called Teruel a couple hours away. After a couple more days of practice and scrimmaging nothing was turning up for me team-wise, but I was told to stay in country in case something popped up for me in the following week or so, so I moved the flight back and decided to take advantage of someplace I'd probably never be again.

The first night of freedom was our last in Teruel, and one we will never forget. We decided to do as the Spaniards do and go to a bull run in a small town. It was probably the craziest thing I've ever seen. They let a bull loose down a street in town, but to make things more interesting they attached flaming torches to each horn. The bull basically runs up and down this street while people run in to slap it, pull its tail or just generally try to piss it off before running to hide behind the metal fences set up to protect the humans. Needless to say, the only person hurt that night was one of us Americans, a pretty gruesome broken arm, all caught on video. Email me if you really want to see it, you have been warned though. So after all that excitement, the remaining guys on the tour all took a bus down to Valencia where we spent a couple late nights. It was a really beautiful city and had some pretty cool museums that we made it to in between nights out.

From there, me and two friends decided to go to Ibiza Island. If you've never heard of it, look it up. The island is famous for its nightclubs, generally considered the best in the world. The rest of the island is also a beautiful paradise. Each town is basically a resort with several beaches full of tourists from all over the world. Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep while on the island between the 4,000 person foam party one night, the 12,000 person Tiesto concert the next and the days on the beach. However, the trip was far from over, because Barcelona awaited us.

We arrived in Barcelona pretty tired and beat up from the previous couple of weeks, but the second day there was the one I had been waiting a long time for. While in Teruel we were trying to plan the next week or so to have some kind of structure to where we would end up. When the possibility of going to Barcelona came up, I knew there was no way I could be there and not see a FC Barcelona football match. They are my favorite European team and they happen to be playing another European powerhouse, AC Milan while we would be there so of course I ordered tickets. The match and atmosphere were unlike anything I've ever experienced. Seeing 100,000 people in a stadium well over an hour before match time screaming their team fight song was a sight that no American sporting event can compare to. Definitely worth the experience if you're ever in the area. The good guys won in the end on penalty kicks. It was also a pretty cool night to go because it was their first home match since winning last year's La Liga championship so it was a pretty unbelievable evening. We spent three more nights in Barcelona and then one more in Madrid before heading home, a little disappointed.

A couple days went by in Chicago, still holding out hope that something would turn up for me. About a week after I got back, my friend Kyle, who I had bartended with Skyped me about a possible opening for an opposite/middle on the team that picked him up, Tierp Volley in Tierp, Sweden. Obviously I jumped at the opportunity and couldn't wait to get started. I knew I wouldn't be making much money but I needed to take the risk and do this while I still could. However, the wait to get everything figured out and actually get my butt into a plane seat took over a month.

I finally boarded a plane on October 11th and about 16 sleepless hours later I landed in Stockholm. After another hour of driving I finally arrived in Tierp. Tierp, Sweden is a town of about 5,000 people an hour north of Stockholm and 20 minutes north of Uppsala, the fourth biggest city in Sweden. Obviously, the small town thing is something I've never experienced before (and if you clicked on that link, you see there's not much to tell you about it). Growing up in Chicago and going to college in Long Beach gets you accustomed to being surrounded by millions of people at all times. However, I wasn't given much time to get accustomed to the time change (I'm still not), I was thrown into practice later that afternoon.

I have two roommates, Kyle, who I mentioned earlier, and Eric Simon, another North American from just outside of Toronto. So at least I'm not going through the culture shock alone. We have a pretty light schedule here, practice Tuesday, Thursday, Friday night, workouts Monday and Wednesday and one match a weekend. This leaves us plenty of free time, something I'm pretty used to. Our main excitement everyday comes when we get to make the six block walk to the center of town for lunch at Gastis (Swedish for "guests"). Thursdays are the best, Swedish pancake day of course! So delicious, definitely worth a trip to Ikea if you're anywhere near one.

My first couple of days were basically spent napping at random times, laying awake all night trying to stay warm and attempting to get into some kind of normal body schedule. All this to get ready for the first league match of the year against none other than the defending league champions, Linköping (pronounced Lin-shepping). By the end of the week, however, I was very disappointed to learn that because of work visa issues I wouldn't be able to play. Luckily, the guys pulled off a great 3-0 win to start the season right in front of our home fans. We fell behind 24-21 in the first game and stormed back for a 26-24 win. After a tight game two win, the beginning of game three found us down 5-1, but again, the "New Tierp," as the townspeople are calling us, got right back in it and took game three with an amazing block to finish it off with authority!

We've already been featured in several Swedish newspaper articles and from what our teammates are telling us, the whole town is very excited about the start to the season and is looking forward to seeing us play again at home in two weeks, there are whispers of a big town party for the match. Well I'll try to be shorter and provide more Sweden info in the next post, but for now, tack (Swedish for "thank you") for reading.

Only two more days until pancake day...