Volleyball Death Match

This weekend I went out to Turgovishte, a town pretty close to me, to go help a volunteer from another group with a fundraising project she has going. The idea was to have a Volunteer vs. Bulgarians volleyball match. Sounded fun, and in the end it actually was a lot of fun. However (just as many seemingly normal things here in BG turn out) the whole deal was an adventure.

I got into town at about 2pm and met the other players from the volunteer team. We were going to get together to play a bit and practice before the match. After buying possibly the greatest prize of all time (a plastic sword) to give to the winners of the match, we eventually made our way to the school where the game was going to go down.

As we waited for the doors to become unlocked, we watched a boys vs. girls dodgeball game going on outside the school. The girls were vicious, and the boys resorted to cheating (i.e. not leaving when they got hit, bringing in 2 people when they caught the balls). I have to say, between that game, and the little boy climbing nearby buildings, the time before the game was pretty entertaining.


Finally we get inside and start hitting the ball around, and get a quick practice game together. Only one person on the team had ever played on a volleyball team before, and the rest of us hadn’t played in a while, if at all. However, for not having any experience, we came together to field some sort of semi-respectable, rag tag team as the opposing team of Bulgarians walked into the gym.

After giving our strongest “USA!” cheer in a huddle we yielded the court so that they could get some practice in. This is when it became apparent that we were going to die. Previously unbeknownst to us, the team has recently won the regional championship. As we sat there watching as the other team practiced serving some of the hardest, most Olympic worthy serves I had ever seen, I got visions of the most mismatched events in sports history It was like the 1992 Basketball Dream Team against the scrubs of the rest of the world. The 0-14 1976 Buccaneers vs. the Steel Curtain…

A good crowd showed up, and the game got underway. We got our butts handed to us, unsurprisingly, but we actually got some good volleys in, and didn’t go scoreless which was nice. I sparked up a conversation with one of the Bulgarian players in between games, and he said, "So, I thought Americans were really good at volleyball,” referring to the dominating performance of the US team at this year’s Olympics. As I laughed to myself, I told him it depended on the region, and that beach volleyball is usually the version played (in Florida at least). Volleyball is serious business here in Bulgaria, and is very much a “man’s game.” Whereas in schools in America, girls usually play volleyball while the boys play basketball, it is interestingly exactly the opposite here.

Anyway, after a couple of games in which we Americans lost by huge lopsided margins, we mixed up the teams and played some mixed games, which yielded the most fun times of the tournament, and made up in part for the loss of confidence I had in my athletic skills. All in all it was an awesome time, and a huge success. The event brought in more money than was expected, and everyone had fun, despite the stinging red marks on our forearms…

Until next time…