Budućnost Match

The other night we had our last match of the first round of the league. It was against a team we had previously had a friendly match against, but both of us were undefeated entering into the official match, so naturally there was a lot of hype and speculation. Apparently everyone in Podgorica thought they would end up winning, but it was really a toss-up. When we played them in the friendly match, we won 25-12, but then lost the second game 25-15. That meant it was clear that both teams had the potential to win depending on which team was having a good day. 

The girls told me that there were going to be a lot of people because everyone was very excited to see how the teams matched up. We played in a sport center that held about 200, and it was completely full. There were tons of younger members of their clubs that were (ridiculously) loud and were very excited to use their vuvuzelas. (you know those obnoxious horns from the world cup? yea, those). It was pretty crazy. The first game seemed like we had it in the bag. We were up 24-19 when Luka decided we should take a timeout “to relax”. I thought this was a little unnecessary, but knowing how euro coaches ALWAYS take all of their timeouts, I didn’t really think too much about it. In the huddle he said that we just needed to relax and make one more strong play. Wellllll, that didn’t exactly go according to plan. They ended up coming back and tying the game 24-24, but we won 26-24...thank goodness!

The second set we won pretty handily, and then the third set we lost--bummer. The fourth set was an exciting one. It went back and forth and was tied at least a million times. Late in the game we were up 22-21 and there was a weird discrepancy with a substitution. Luka wanted to send someone in, but the other coach thought he had passed the time window and it shouldn’t be allowed. This led to LOTS of arguing, game delaying, referee conferences etc. and eventually he got a yellow card for a delay of game. This put us up 23-21 and you would have thought he would have learned his lesson and let his team come play and hope for the best. But no no, this would have been the easy way out. The coach’s reaction was to go to the scoreboard, try to flip it back a few points, all the while yelling at everyone. Solution? RED CARD! Which once again gave us a point. Now his arguing had cost him two points, and had also given us game point. (Even though he was delaying the game which annoyed me, he was also giving us free points, which was awesome!) We ended up winning the next point when yours truly solo blocked a back row attack, which I was pretty pumped about and of course we were all really happy to have won the match. On the way home, Luka said something that I didn’t understand --naturally-- and everyone seemed really happy. Then, Bojana told me that we didn’t have practice until Tuesday, which was a full two days off, a Galeb first. My mind started RACING trying to decide how best to use my time and how I could go to so many places with this kind of time. It really seemed like an eternity to me and I was really excited I had a chance to finally get out for an entire weekend. So I went home and bogged down the kayak.com server while I created a master plan!