Far Western Volleyball 2005 Comedy of Earrings

I was watching glancing at a very exciting game between Empire 16 Mizuno and Colorado Performance last night. The score of the first game was 24-23 and it was Colorado's game point. Up to then, it had been an excellent match of a big power team, Empire and a tenacious acrobatic and slightly undersized Colorado team. Empire normally gets a lot of points from their rightside players hitting on two or even on overpasses and Colorado was doing a great job of defensing it and forcing Empire to depend more on the four,which they do well too. CP looked to be very strong on out of system points as well. Suddenly, the referee started looking closely at one of the CP players and pulls out a yellow card. Apparently, the CP player still had an earring in and game point CP suddenly became Empire's game.

The next game started out point for point then Empire broke to a slightl lead at 11-9. The game wound up 25-13. I've neer seen this. Everyone on the sideline, was "Wow, what could that coach possibly hae said or done?" before they realized it was an earring that had prompted the yellow card and the free point. But, I've never seen a better reason to give to your volleyball daughter about why piercings are a bad thing :}.

I did think about i some afterwards.a) earrings etc have always been verboten.b) at this age, it's a player and a coach's responsibility to know that as part of being prepared.c) blah blah blah, it still sucked even though my daughter's club benefitted.d) I guess the ref just happened to notice when he noticed and if you're an honest ref that 's what you have to do. the calls stay the same whether it's game point or 21-4)

I was thinking the ultimate cool thing would have been for the other coach to order his server to serve the ball into the ground on purpose. Of course, no sane caoch would do that in the middle of a qualifier. and it would have shown up the ref.And this wasn't a bad call or a wrong call, just unfortunate timing, but it was really cool in that movie "Best of the Best" where Phillip Rhee doesn't knock out his helpless Korean opponent who killed his older brother. Anyway, the Koreans win the big Tae Kwan Do match because of it, then they come and give the Americans the medals and all their nuclear weapons, because the Americans had true honor and one of them was actually Julia Roberts's brother and the other was Sean Penn's brother.. that was just the movies though, could you imagine if something like that had happened say in Olymic gymnastics..with the US and Korea or say in speedskating.

Anyway, Empire 16 played well yesterday and won their pool.

fwiw If Jammers is not one of the top 25 15's teams in the country, I'd be really scared to see Kiva Red. Jammers has a great setter, monster hitting left in #25, and a back row that routinely does barrel rolls and actually digs up the ball consistently in the process. In 4 games, I saw them out of position once (I'm not a volleyball coach though) and all their hitters read blocks and spots extremely well. Other than the morning delay due to he labor walk out, NCVA seems to be running a very efficient tournament. I didn't see a single older person forced to stand while parents whose kids weren't even playing hogged seats. Matches seemed to flow smoothly (at least on the couple courts I was watching). I also wanted to mention tha I've always liked having the sitting volleyball team playing in the midst of Far Westerns, it's inspiring to watch and keeps things like yellow cards for earrings in perspective. Best of luck to all the clubs there, and if you're a coach or a player, stay out of the tattoo/piercing parlor on Viriginia St., yesterday proved that only bad hings happen when young women get their bodies pierced. I also don't think the incident helped the business of the jewelry vendors in the sales area. In previous year, it was mostly volleyball related stuff, this year there's more of a mix, but can you imagine what coaches think now when they see their players hanging out at the jewelry booth?
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