Follow University of Hawai'i women's volleyball head coach Dave Shoji as he attends the Olympic Games in London, England in the daily blog, “DAVE'S OLYMPIC JOURNEY.” Shoji and his wife, Mary, will chronicle their experience of attending their first Olympic Games and will watch several men's and women's volleyball matches.
Thursday, Aug. 2
This will be the last correspondence as we head home early tomorrow after a whirlwind seven days. What an unbelievable experience that cannot be put into words or print. Suffice to say, we're happy we made that spur of the moment decision to go! Now, we can actually see some of the other events and look at results as we had difficulty keeping up because we were at volleyball till late at night.
Tonight capped off an unbelievable volleyball week for us as we were able to see the best teams in the world compete at the highest level. Brazil vs. USA men tonight had every emotion from the highest highs to the lowest lows, but USA prevailed 3-1, Led by Kaiser High and UH product Clay Stanley. He dominated from the service line, front and back court, and even played some good D. Both the men and women are undefeated going into the last two pool play matches. I really think both teams will medal and both have a shot at gold if everything falls into place. A little luck couldn't hurt either.
The major difference between the men and women is the speed of the game, the women play more of a finesse game and the men are more powerful. It's much like men's and women's tennis. Aloha for now, hope to see you on August 24th, our home opener!
Wednesday, August 1
OK, I won't bore you with details of our double-decker bus tour of London, just suffice to say we couldn't understand a word our English guide said. I have to say the hundreds and hundreds of volunteers that are all over the city in their color coordinated uniforms have been wonderful. They are courteous, informative, friendly, helpful, and go out of their way to make you feel special, anyone say aloha spirit in London? We sure will be more helpful when we encounter visitors to our state!
After our tour, we were fortunate to be invited to a reception for lunch hosted by USA Volleyball. Since the women played tonight, only the men's team was there, including their coaches. It was nice to visit with Alan Knipe, head coach, and assistants Gary Sato, John Speraw, new UCLA coach, and Mike Sealy, former assistant of ours and current NCAA champion. Also, it was nice to see local boy Clay Stanley with his mom, Sandy.
We had our usual pre-game dinner and drinks at another pub and I have yet to see a fresh, green vegetable. I guess it's too cold or something, everything tastes canned. My choices for dinner have been typical English comfort food; fish and chips, meat pie, and bangers and mash. Tasty, but not healthy!
As for the match against China, one exciting experience! The crowd was again alive and boisterous with waving flags all over the arena. I think we should start something and pass out flags to our fans, I'm talking BIG flags. The crowd is different because there were pockets of Chinese and Americans randomly all over the arena, many times right next to each other.
Never the less, what a battle. USA won set 1, but played a little uneven. Our coach Hugh McCutcheon pulled two starters and inserted Megan Hodge, formerly of Penn State fame, and Danielle Scott, the 40 something year old, and 4 or 5 time Olympian. What a move it turned out to be! They play inspired ball and with Logan Tom scoring with her jumper and Lindsey Berg's uncanny setting, USA pulled out a 3-0 win. The one thing about the Chinese team, in my opinion, they are not the usual quick, ball control, defensive team typical of Asian teams, but have some big, I said big, girls who just play a different style than I'm used to seeing.
We now have beaten the top three teams in the pool and have the inside track to the No. 1 seed going into the playoffs. Finishing first rather than second in the pool is HUGE, so we can't lose focus against Serbia and Turkey.
Mary and I will be taking in the men's match versus Brazil tomorrow night, then head for home on Friday, back to my day job. Just a reminder, we start practice one week from today and our first match is only 23 days from now. Still time for you to get your season tickets to Wahine volleyball! Go 'BOWS!
Tuesday, July 31
Mind the gap is a constant reminder on the tube to be careful of the gap between the train and the platform. We took the tube out to Wimbledon to see one of the most hallowed venues of ANY sport. What a moving experience it was for me because I've really wanted to see the Wimbledon tennis tourney for a long time. Unfortunately, it is played during the important recruiting season, late June and early July.
We had tickets for the grounds only, and not center court or court #1, but just to walk around the outside courts was sufficient. We were able to see several matches before it rained, but just as interesting was to watch the young crew pull out the tarp and take down the nets. It was like clockwork, and they moved to the next court in about 5 minutes. After they laid the tarp, they pumped air underneath and the tarp rose like a bubble. After a two hour rain delay, play resumed, but we had had enough and headed back to town.
We were invited to the USA House by USA Volleyball for dinner and a social hour. The USA House is a sponsored room where food and drinks are served all day for various officials and families. On big screen TV's, we watched various Americans compete live and we cheered when we won the gold in gymnastics and stood during the medal presentation, really chicken-skin time.
BTW, as you may know, Kyla Ross, the American gymnast, is the daughter of former UH athlete, Jason Ross, and granddaughter of Ken and Candy Tano, parents of former UH volleyball player, Nohea Tano. Confused? It's just a small world! The crowd was also deflated minutes later when Michael Phelps was nosed out for the gold.
Tomorrow, we are looking forward to the USA vs. China match at 8 pm. We will mind the gap and do a little exploring of this vibrant city during the day. Aloha, talk to you tomorrow.
Monday, July 30
We upgraded our hotel early this morning for reasons I won't go into. Ran into another UC Santa Barbara grad, Mike Erne, and had breakfast before he and his wife left for Scotland.
We had the morning off from the Olympics, so we visited Westminster Abbey. What an amazing edifice with so much history, it's hard to imagine. Besides being a living church, it has tombs of kings, queens, poets, architects, actors, and even Darwin is entombed there.
Then it was off to the volleyball venue for the Russia vs. Dominican match and USA vs. Brazil. Russia had three players at least 6'5" and had an amazing block, but the diminutive Dominicans hung in there and were competitive before losing 3-1. Interesting fact, the Russian left-side hitter is married to former Mid-Pacific graduate Jerry Estes. Another strange thing was the two Russian middles were the smallest starters on their team at 6'1'' or so.
Then it was time for the feature match between the No. 1 and 2 teams in the world. The USA dominated the first two sets hitting on all cylinders. Again, like night #1, USA could not maintain their intensity and lost set 3, but regained focus and closed it out 3-1. The atmosphere in the arena was electric. The PA announcer gave a running play by play and encouraged the capacity crowd of 17,000 to support their favorite team. The crowd was about 50-50 for each team, but it was very loud throughout the night.
USA now plays China on Wednesday in pool play. The USA men are off to a good start as well, and play Germany tomorrow. Mary and I will take the tube out to Wimbledon tomorrow so I can cross off another on the bucket list, then back for the men's match.
After the match tonight, we were treated to a dinner for locals in London hosted by the Watamull family who lives part time in London. A good time was had by all. Aloha for now.
Sunday, July 29
If you ever travel to a country that drives on the left, you gotta look right when crossing the street or you'll risk getting run over. Trust me, we've almost been hit because our instinct is to look left.
Anyway, after a much needed, long sleep, we took the “tube” to Westminster, near the horse guard parade, which houses the beach volleyball venue. The tube is London's subway and it's an awesome system to get around this huge city, a testament to public transportation (anybody say rail?). The beach volleyball venue is an amazing 15,000-seat outdoor arena in the midst of Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and the House of Parliament. We didn't have time to sightsee as we were trying to get to the matches on time.
The line, or queue as they say here, was really long, but we had to be patient and we finally got to our seats right before the first match. There were four matches in this session, but unfortunately, none of them featured USA teams. The match between men's teams from Venezuela and Denmark started in warm, brilliant sunshine and ended in cold rain. I mean really cold, I don't know how the players could play in this type of weather. In Hawai'i, we would just pack up and go home.
All the matches we saw went the distance (3 sets) and were very competitive. It's amazing how global beach volleyball has become, as teams from Germany, Latvia, and even Great Britain won matches today. The capacity crowd was very enthusiastic, even though 95% had probably never seen a beach volleyball match before today. I still think the USA teams will prevail in the end. We left before the last match because it started raining again, but we were truly impressed with the whole operation plus the high quality volleyball.
Another tube ride and “fish and chips” at a local pub, we're ready to turn in. Tomorrow we'll be back to women's volleyball versus Brazil. Can't wait. Aloha
Saturday, July 28
Wow, two red eyes, one to San Francisco, a five-hour layover, then another one to the UK (10 hours), a train and a cab ride and we finally arrived at our very, very modest hotel room in London, England. Immediately, we set out on foot to explore the city and ran into fellow UC Santa Barbara grad and former Minnesota coach Mike Hebert. He was very proud to be Lindsey Berg's college coach.
There is a definite Olympic buzz in the air as we heard many, many different languages on our walk through famous Hyde Park. After a short nap, we headed over to the Earls Court area and dropped in to a typical English pub for dinner and a beverage. We then headed to the volleyball venue for the 8 pm USA vs. Korea opening match.
The USA squad, headed by former UH foes Foluke Akinradewo (Stanford), Jordan Larson (Nebraska), Destinee Hooker (Texas), Christa Harmotta (Penn State), Logan Tom (Stanford), and Lindsey Berg (Minnesota), looked good in taking a 2-0 lead, but made some unforced errors to let Korea back into the match but eventually prevailed 3-1. It's amazing how easy these world class athletes make the game seem easy, as they make amazing plays time and time again. I guess it's the many, many repetitions and numerous international matches they play in that makes it look routine.
USA is in a tough pool of six and needs to stay focused and play one match at a time so they can get a good seed for the elimination matches later in the week. We stayed for one set of the late match between Brazil and Turkey, and there were still about 15,000 people there! USA's next match will be Monday versus the very strong Brazilian team.
Enough for now, we're headed to beach volleyball tomorrow. By the way, the weather was perfect today, about 70 degrees, and no rain!
Thursday, July 26
Serendipity! A chance meeting with an old friend who asked me if I was going to the Olympics, led to a whirlwind few hours, and a final decision to "just go for it" and book the flight to London. Incredulously, I have NEVER been to an Olympics, so I guess it's about time, another bucket list item to cross off.
My wife Mary and I will leave Thursday night and arrive in London 7 a.m. on Saturday. We will be attending the USA vs. Korea match later that night. My close friend Dennis Berg, father of USA setter and Punahou grad, Lindsey Berg had extra tickets for some of the women's matches so we were lucky to score the tickets. We are excited to get to London and have since found out several ex-players of ours will be attending the games too. Laura Phillips Alford, Aven Lee (who is on our flight), Tehani Miyashiro, and Jen Carey are among those going. Of course, Aven is going to watch her cousin Tamari play who happens to be Tehani's sister.
I'm breaking out all my USA gear to wear at the games, and will be taking furious notes on the tactics these international teams are using! Aloha for now, talk to you from London.
