July 14, 2017
On the final day of the 2017 European Global Challenge, the Mountain West All-Star volleyball team played in the championship match for the U23 teams, facing the USA Volleyball College National Team. Unfortunately, the MW team fell 3-0 (25-15, 25-15, 25-13) to USA CNT, bringing home the silver medal for the conference.
Below are blogs from Spartan players Breann Robinson and Nandyala Gama who talk about the past few days of play at the tournament.
July 13 - Breann
We had two matches today, both against Slovenian teams. The first match was against a Slovenian u23 club team, and we won in three which set us up to get into the semi-finals for our evening match. After the first game, we went back to the hotel, cooled off in the pool, then went to our rooms to take a quick rest before our match. Our second match was against the Slovenian national u18 team. We won in three, but not so easily as the first. Our last set we started off horribly, and at one point we were behind 17-11. At this point, all that mattered was one ball at a time, and every single point. Then, the score was 24-23 and we had game point. We finished the game with a tough serve which scored us a point. We beat them 3-0 and made history at this tournament for our conference. The Mountain West Conference team has never gone this far in this tournament. We were all so proud and excited to have accomplished this goal and made it to the championship match tomorrow. Our game is tomorrow evening at 7 p.m., and we play the USA Collegiate National team for first place. WISH US LUCK!
July 12 - Nandyala
Today, we had our last pool match and beat the American team BIP-southeast. We ended tied with the Slovenian team with 7 points but... woohooo, classified!!
After our 12:30 p.m., we found out that we had the afternoon off because we were classified already and the quarterfinals start only tomorrow! Therefore, we got into a van and went to the beautiful Kamenjar beach. Breann and I jumped together from a 30-foot cliff!!! It was scary and amazingggg. After that we swam into the Blue Cave... what a gorgeous place! I can't put into words how beautiful Croatia is.
Tomorrow we will play the quarterfinals, but we will find out in the morning who we have to beat :)
The Mountaineers keep climbing their way to the top!! Nandyala Gama