NUC Volleyball

So I'm sure you guys have all enjoyed my adventures around Neuchatel but now it's time to talk about the fun part.. volleyball! Neuchatel University Club is in the Division A league which is the top league in Switzerland. It then goes to B, first second, third and fourth. There are a total of nine teams in the A league and we will play each team twice, once at home and once away. There is also the Swiss Cup which is a tournament against people in our league. I'm pretty sure the tournament is set up where depending on how you finished in the league helps your ranking in the tournament. The team last year finished second in the league and this year we are looking to take first! Another tournament we play in is called the European Cup or the CEV. If you can't guess by the name, we play against other European teams. How you finished last year, places you for the following year. We play against Serbia in the first round and then who knows after that. I'm hoping we can make it far so I can see a lot of European countries! Our season is from the beginning of October and ends in April.. so it's quite a long time!

Right now we are just getting prepared for the season. Everyone on the team practices four times a week, Tuesday through Friday for about two hours. The girls who are from Switzerland have jobs during the day but for the professional (American) players like myself we also have two additional practices Wednesday and Thursday in the afternoon. On Monday, everyone goes to the weight room to work out together and again the professional players have an additional time that we need to go to the weight room. practice in two different places- the Riveraine which is where our games are also held and the Maladiere. The really interesting thing about the Maladiere is that the complex is huge! There is soccer stadium (seats and all) on one half, practice courts for volleyball, basketball and gymnastics on the fourth floor and a mall with a grocery store in the basement. I think it's so great that the stadium isn't only just used for games like how most stadiums are used in the states but that it can be used everyday. It's a much better use of space! So although we aren't in the gym the entire day, my days can get pretty busy!

I'm standing in front of the Maladiere Centre! This place is huge! If you notice the lights at the top of the building those are for the night soccer games. The blue windows is where we practice- it has a great view of the lake!

The biggest difference I noticed was the structure of practice. Here we start out with a 30 minute warm-up by our trainer Ophelia, compared to back home where we would compete in games as a warm up. Ophelia works us really hard but I think it will benefit us in the end. During the warm up we do some knee stabilization either with hopping on boxes with one or two legs and making sure our knees don't wobble all around. In the break with our partner we work on our balance which also helps focus on keeping our knee from moving all over the place. They really are trying to prevent as many knee injuries as they can by increasing our leg muscles and balance. Another important thing we work on is abs. Over here they call it genauge (sorry I have no idea how to spell it!) which is basically the plank position. If anyone has ever done it - it can be quite difficult! The first time we worked with Ophelia we had to do genuage for 2 minutes!! I was definitely dying before the end! The good thing is that the more we do the easier and longer I can stay in the position. I think I'm going to be really fit when I come back in April!

For the rest of practice we work on volleyball stuff- passing, hitting defense and serving. Our head coach Philippe was out of the country for the first two weeks so now the practices are more intense. Another thing I noticed is that there isn't a lot of technique coaching involved. At Illinois, my former head coach Kevin was all about a certain technique that he wanted us to use so there was always talk about what we were and weren't doing. I guess since we are pro's we should know what we are doing and fix it ourselves! I like that we can "self-coach" now because I usually know what I did wrong, but its just something I need to get used to. There are a total of three Americans on the team including myself. I'm playing outside, Lindsay Stalzer is going to play right side and Bryn Kehoe who was on the team last year will set. I think we are going to be very strong and I'm excited to see how we do in our first games!