Azerbaijan Adventures: Christmas is HERE!

Happy Holidays!!!! I hope everyone is having good luck with Christmas shopping and holiday plans! :)

Ok so for the week update...our last match we lost in four to Igasadtchi this is the club with Tayyiba Haneef another USA national team player competing in this league, there are at least 5 national team players former or current playing in Baku this season. I personally feel like we didn't come to play, and competed very poorly against them, even though we won one set, the other three were embarassing! At one point we were up 16-13 and ended up losing 25-17. That is just an example of how we performed. I don't have a lot of positive things to say about this match and I am upset that we lost, because we didn't try. It's so frustrating to walk onto the court and know that the person next to me isn't as passionate about the game as I am and this is getting harder to deal with week by week. I KNOW in my heart that we are good enough to beat some of these teams or at least go to five sets with them but for some reason we aren't perfoming up to par.

After our loss, Adnan wasn't happy and he gave each of us a piece of his mind, I had a good hitting percentage this match but he told me that I need to stop returning overpasses if I'm not going to get a kill. In other words, if I want to put the first ball back onto their side it needs to score a point, and I was tipping this ball and it wasn't scoring. I know I need to fix this so I listened to everything coach had to say and told him "ok, I understand and I'll work on it." His other problem with my play was that I didn't serve tough enough and he'd prefer I missed the serve going at it tough, than give them an easy free ball serve. He feels either way it's going to be a point for their side wether I serve it easy or miss.

I have always disliked serving, and lately I'm thinking perhaps I need to start jump serving again, because at least this has more velocity than standing and my jump serve is definitely tougher. I was going to work on jump serving in practice today, but my right foot has really been hurting and I saw a doctor prior to practice about it...whom suggested I take it easy on the jumping, soooo I couldn't work on that serve today but once my foot starts to feel better I am going definitely going to do it! :)

All in all...after our third loss in a row, the moral of the story is that coach wants us to concentrate a lot more, take our games seriously and focus on bettering ourselves in practice! Which I 100% agree with...I asked the girls in our team meeting the day after the match, what I could do to help motivate them? What kind of encouragement do they need during the match? Because lately I've been feeling helpless when we are losing and being I can't talk to them cause of our language barrier, I just have to try and smile, use body language to jump around and cheer loud so that they can feed off of my energy and get excited too! Whenever we do something grea, or even just to forget about the last point and keep fighting. We would go into a time out last match and some of their faces are so somber like the world is ending even though we are barely losing!!! I'm telling them "COME ON!!! We're right there!" But it's not getting a reaction back from some of my teammates. So I was curious to find out how they feel about motivation and what works best for them. When I asked this though, and it was translated three ways lol I never really got an answer back! Because my coach cut in and said that he thinks it's a good idea to find this stuff out about each other and that we should spend more time together outside of practice, as a team and bond more. That this is where we can figure out what works for us on the court. I hope we will spend more time together because it will help us to care more about playing for one another on the court and not as six individuals. Don't get me wrong though there are girls that care just as much as I do but it feels like it is far and few between.

Ok enough about the last match! Our next game is tomorrow against Rabita the number one team in the league this team has Kim Glass and Mamadova a famous player here in Azerbaijan, so it's going to be a tough match for sure and we are NOT the favored team. I like playing these kinds of matches though because being the underdog relieves all pressure and being we are quote unquote "expected to lose" we can play our hearts out (I hope) and maybe come out with an upset! :) I have faith in us and my teammates we will see how everyone shows up tomorrow!!

We did get a chance to do some team bonding today! We went out for tea and cake to celebrate Shine's birthday who is the interpretter for Carla and I cause of course he speaks English. I had a lot of fun tonight, the walk to the restaurant was so lovely it was on the Caspian Sea and I took lots of pics from the water works to the flowers which mind you are still in bloom, cause the weather is wonderful here! Especially for the winter months :) I saw a really great building and also got some good team photos in the cafe!

The Birthday Boy next to coach Adnan, and him outside smoking of course...today I asked my coach for a cigarette as a joke, he was so shocked at first until I smiled and told him I was kidding I really don't smoke! Lol everyone got a really good laugh out of it! :)