1. Home
  2. Sports
  3. Volleyball
photo of Beverly Oden

Beverly's Volleyball Blog

By Beverly Oden, About.com Guide to Volleyball

World League Competition Underway

Wednesday June 17, 2009

The USA men's team began its first major post-Olympic competition with two World League matches in the Netherlands. Eight players return from last year's World League and Beijing gold medal-winning squads.

The look of the starting line up has changed significantly which is not uncommon the year following the Olympics. Four starters from the Olympic team will not be participating in the six-week competition. Setter Lloy Ball and opposite Gabe Gardner retired and middle blocker Ryan Millar and outside hitter Reid Priddy are taking the summer off.

Middle blocker David Lee and libero Rich Lambourne are the only returning starters for this competition. The bench looks different too with new coach Alan Knipe at the helm after taking over for former head coach Hugh McCutcheon.

The team opened the competition with a quick 0-3 loss. But it is a good sign that after studying the tape and making some line up changes, they managed to turn it around two days later, winning in five. Knipe replaced setter Kevin Hansen with Donald Suxho and outside hitter Scott Touzinsky was replaced with Matt Anderson.

World League is a long and brutal tournament with six weeks of competition and travel to all corners of the world, but it will supply some great match experience for the new national team and a good showing may bring them some confidence for the team's future.

Comments

July 16, 2009 at 10:34 pm
(1) Peter G. says:

Bev,
Good job on the article. I was on the FIVB website to get the upcoming schedule of matches in Italy but the site didn’t have that information available yet. I’ll be there from 8/4-8/14 and hope to catch a match. Do you know the schedule for the Italian men’s team during that time or how I can find it? Mahalo.

Aloha,
Peter G.

Leave a Comment

Line and paragraph breaks are automatic. Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title="">, <b>, <i>, <strike>

Discuss

Community Forum

Explore Volleyball

About.com Special Features

Learn to Pitch

Strike out the competition with these step-by-step pictorials. More >

Introduction to Pilates

Learning Pilates fundamentals can help you get the most out of your exercise regime. More >

  1. Home
  2. Sports
  3. Volleyball

©2009 About.com, a part of The New York Times Company.

All rights reserved.