Game 3 - Olympiacos

Last night, Thursday, we had our 3rd match of the regular season.  We played against a team in Athens with a lot of volleyball tradition - Olympiacos.  Our team considered this match a "derby" match even though Olympiacos has gotten off to a slow start this season.  Their team has a monster of a kid playing opposite for them...He was the best middle last season but decided he wanted to play opposite this season and has done a pretty impressive job.  He has a big serve, strong attack and prob one of the biggest blocks I have seen in a long time.  Although Ryan gave it to him pretty good last night.  Their 4 foreign players consist of Jablonski from USA, Jurquin from Cuba, Kral from Czech and Zhekov who is the starting setter for the Bulgarian national team.

We took the first set 33-31 after a slow start.  Our team finally got in the grove with our serve under our new coach Freddy Brooks.  I think he really installed some patience in us for this match and I really hope it carries through the rest of the season.  For the second set we took control around the 16 mark but let them come back to 24-23.  We set our middle for the set who did a great job at hitting the ball high and deep behind the defense.  In the 3rd set we battled point for point through the entire set.  I believe it was 22-22 when we got ended up in rotation 1...me hitting from the left side.  I have been pretty good in row 1 this season but I had two chances to put the ball away and got dug and blocked to give them a 24-22 lead.  This was enough to give them the set in the end.  4th set we came out strong and didn't look back.  We took the set 25-14 behind some strong serving and blocking.

Its always better when you win.  The game was televised and it has been really nice to get so many congratulations from fans via facebook.  But the best was the 40 minute flight back to Thessaloniki, getting picked up by my babe, getting into my own bed and throwing on the latest episode of Modern Family.

We play again on Wednesday vs Kalamaria.  We are going to need to bring our "A" game to every match this season.