Lauren Bertolacci

http://lauren.bertolacci.com.au/

This is the link to my new blog page. I will not be updating this site anymore. I've moved over because there are more features available to me. hope you like it.

Played our first game at home yesterday against Nurmberg. Firstly, the atmosphere is amazing, I've never played in front of a home crowd like that before. There was about 550 people there (in a pretty small gym), a guy on a set of drums, a dj and an announcer, all making a lot of noise the whole game Good to play in and even better when they are on your side. So we started absolutely terribly for them, very nervous start, no one could serve in and we couldn't pass, consequently lost that set pretty easily. The next three were pretty much dogfights, we never really got a rythym as they had some great defence and attack, and every point we won we had to fight very hard for, which made each one pretty sweet to win. Very loud, physical and emotional game that we came out of on top in 4. Good to win in front of the home crowd, long road trip next weekend, hopefully another good result.

First game was away vs TG Bad Soden. We won comfortably in three. The first set was very clean, perfect passing and we connected well, beating them to 17. The last two were a little more messy, 19 and 22. There is a news vid report from our game.

http://www.sachsen-fernsehen.de/default.aspx?ID=1095&showNews=126037

We play our furst game at home this week, and I'm told its big. We have some good support and a loud crowd. Really looking forward to it!!

Some more footage from Asian Champs, vs Taipei and China. We didn't get the whole game for both these two games so they are a bit shorter...

Have my first game with the club tomorro...little bit nervous. I'll write more after the game. If you happen to be awake at 3am on Sunday morning theres a liveticker you can watch. http://www.volleyball-bundesliga.de/volleyball/2bl_popup.php?saison=12&liga=3&spiel=6010,%206016,%206024&public=a74f290e83688965670be863da27578b

 

 

I’m back in Germany now, looking forward to the start of the season next week. I’d like to put my perspective out there regarding the last three weeks. Because no one knows what it was like, as much as one of the players.

Firstly, we finished 8th. Considering we finished 10th at the last Asians, looks not too bad right? I guess the next thing is you see we didn’t win a game…defaulted our way into the second round. Let me put this out there, last Asians we were in a pool with Japan and Korea…that’s unlucky, not a whole lot of chance of progressing. This year we were in a pool with Thailand and Tajikistan. Tajikistan pulled out last minute and we went through, chances are that we should have won that match easily and made top 8…partially because we had a pretty easy pool anyway. So, for those out there that think we got lucky, we bloody well did, its just that if we had of got to play that Tajikistan game, a few more would have thought we deserved our spot. Oh and to put it out there...there is nothing more we wanted as well, to prove our spot.

 

Us being able to play the top teams was the best thing that could have happened to the program. Sure on the scoreboard we struggled…but with one week of training behind us, there were some awesome glimpses…and as we get to know each other better, and some more individual experience, those glimpses will turn into consistency (check some of those glimpses out in the above clip!!). Silly mistakes and errors will slowly eradicate, and that 15 we got against China, will get much bigger. The thing is with these teams, you have to win your points, you don’t get freebies. So the points we won, they were good, high quality. We gave away quite a few unnecessary points, but like I said, give us time, and that will change. Some of the girls on our team had never played for Australia before, let alone seen an International quality game being played. Well, we got thrown in the deep end…and it could not have given us a better experience.

I believe we can be a force in Volleyball, just like the men…a massive congratulation to them for winning Asian Champs!!! Why can’t we do what they did? Well we can, our programs are so far apart in regards to the stages they are in, but we have a very positive start, and are only looking up. Don’t get me wrong, it was very disappointing not to get a win on the board, and everytime we went out there, we played to win. We will improve, we will get results…but this tournament, getting to play the top 7 teams in Asia, was worth a lot more than a few wins on the board.

Check out a few you tube things that are up there…

Aus Vs Japan Highlights
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK2PgfnBz3M

Aus Vs China (Chinese TV program highlights- including my massive block!!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNOpAoGLdlc&mode=related&search=
  

Oh yeh and my massive 6 pack- stung a little.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-xKO7hPmuE&mode=related&search=