"Failure is part of the process of success. You can't be succesful without failing first. People who haven't been sucessful are those who have never failed." - Robert Kiyosaki
Finally, after 6 years away from Argentinian volleyball, I'm back!! And I've decided to play the most important competition of the country, the Argentinian National League.
I chose to play for Gimnasia y Esgrima de Buenos Aires (GEBA), a team that partnered with San Antonio de Areco to be GEBA-ARECO, a very competitive team shooting for the top-4.
GEBA-ARECO Team in San Antonio (December 2007)
We passed the first test: December 23rd 2007
Three weekends have been played of the National League and we are at the top of the B group with 12 points and only one set lost. We've been practicing very well and spending time getting to know each other; it is an amazing group of people that will keep working hard and will be the talk of the second part of the league. Stay tunned.
Back to the court: January 20th 2008
Two more games were played this weekend but unfortunatelly not everything went as planned. On Saturday, January 19th we went to La Plata and though it wasn't pretty, it was effective and we took the game 3-1. Sunday was a different story, still playing bad and this time with no attitude nor effectivness, the games passed us by in a heart beat and before we realized we had lost 3-0 against the same rival we played the day before. Not to be alaramed, however; we all know that this is the beauty of sports, we always get another chance.
Staying on top:
Getting over last weekend, GEBA showed that it is ready to give a fight for the Championship. We were able to beat the three-times Champion, River at their home court playing great volleyball and with no questions asked: 3-1. However, there are still a few screws to be adjusted and so we left a second victory passed by on Sunday when we lost in a tight 3-2 game. This is how the first round ends, with GEBA on the top of the Group B and River... second. The return round promises to be amazing.
Team GEBA-ARECO in Montevideo, Uruguay (February 2008)
Return round:
We played two more weekends of the Argentinean League and GEBA-ARECO is still fighting to stay on top of the B group. The first weekend we traveled to Montevideo, Uruguay where we won both games with no major problems, 3-0 and 3-1. After a weekend off we had to travel one more time, in this occassion we went to Monte Hermoso to, once again, win both games with no problems, 3-0. Now it is time to play the good games against the only two teams that took a match from us. It'll be interesting.
An early ending:
The end of the league wasn't as expected. After having a couple of decent weekends against GELP and River (we split with both teams at home) we finished second in our group and so we had to play quarter finals against Freyre. We went to Cordoba during the week and we dropped a 3-0 match playing very bad volleyball and having even a worse attitude which we paid for. Then after a few days to recover from that we were ready to play at home the return game.
We started strong 2-0 but we weren't smart enough to keep playing well when we needed it and so we let them get the third game. The fourth was a different story. We were down for 5 points and a few subs got us back into the game but again it was hard to close it with their great defense and we lost it 32-30. The 5th game was just weird. We were down 8-2 switching sides and though we played our harts out it wasn't enough to make the come back and our season was over right there.
End of the season remarks:
It is never nice to lose. It is even worse to come short of your expectations and ours were to get to semi-finals. Loosing in quarters left a lot of open wounds that will only be cured with time. However, I have to say that personally it was a great experience to play again in Argentina, with a great coaching staff and players and being part of great institution.
We can argue that we didn't have enough time to get the team functioning in only 3 months (since most girls have never played together), that we lost our best middle half-way through the season and we weren't able to replace her, that leadership was thin and way under the expectations but I don't like to have excuses when I lose. I'd rather take responsibility, learn from the mistakes we had during the season and look forward for the next one. Because if there is something I love about sports is the fact that you always get another chance.
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