SQUEAKING OUT A 5TH PLACE - OSTRAVA E16
We started our Saturday off strong with a Hotworx sauna/yoga session. If you haven’t been to one, we highly suggest it, especially for new yogis! You are in your own room with a controllable temperature and an instructor on the TV. We set our room to 125° for a 45-minute yoga flow session. It was fricken hot! So hot that Kristen did have to leave 4 times in 35 minutes and couldn’t finish the session because yoga is very hard, especially in the heat! It was a great preflight sweat and solid recovery after a short but very busy couple of days at home.
Hotworx Harahan
Pre-flight stretch and sweat
Our list of things to do between landing in New Orleans on Tuesday after the Huntington Beach AVP and leaving for Ostrava, Czech Republic on Saturday was very, very long. The week flew by with training and lifting each day. Recovery massages, chiropractic appointment to get realigned, a lunch interview with a local newspaper, a sports psych meeting, mid-season survey responses, revamping the entire TKN product line via the survey requests, trip planning for Ostrava, packing, scheduling practices with foreign teams in Ostrava, writing the newsletter, 2 new sponsorship product drop meetings (coming soon!!), and logging our whereabouts for the next 6 months for a potential drug test via the FIVB. Busy was an understatement! Yes, you read that correctly, the international tournament regulations say that we must log our locations from June 15th to December 31st, if you are not where you say you are it is considered an ‘X’ and you will be placed on a must watch list and two ‘X’s’=FAILURE.
Right after the Hotworx session ended we went straight home to shower and get to the airport because Memorial Day weekend travel had been insane. Of course, we were early so we flew through check-in and security. Doesn’t that always happen? When you’re early there are never lines or traffic and when you are running behind everything moves at the pace of molasses. I would say we have perfected the skill of packing; I weighed my bag in at exactly 50 pounds.
As we made our way through the airport, I was cracking up laughing at Kristen. I had seen this video on Instagram of a friend group buying each other phone cases that they have to use, the most outrageous, eye-catching phone cases so naturally we did the same. I bought Kristen a pink leopard purse phone case. If you know Kristen at all it is the exact opposite of her taste. Every single time I would look over at her carrying the phone via the baby strap I would begin to laugh. Kristen bought me a phone case that looks like a package of cheese, which is very ironic because I don’t eat cheese with my lactose intolerance. I would say, I won the battle. Kristen was even complimented in the New Orleans lounge for her phone case that was “so cute”, meanwhile I am smirking and trying to hold back my laughter.
We had a 3-flight sequence to arrive in Poland and then a 1-hour drive into Ostrava, Czech Republic via the FIVB recommendations. On the first flight to New Jersey Kristen was back on her reading kick, Colleen Hoover, of course, and I watched the movie form of the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k. It was pretty thought provoking about the sacrifices we all willingly make, personally, the choice to travel for 20 hours to compete and then fly 20 hours back within a week sounds crazy! To me, it's well worth it. Is it fun to fly that long? No. Are you exhausted? Yes. Would I still choose this? Yes, because I love it and it's not even considered a sacrifice, we just do it!
When we arrived at the EWR airport we were shuttled around via bus, there were no lounges inside of security, and needless to say we were not fans! It had been so long since we have had to choose which outrageously priced and subpar airport food to order. It took us forever, lots of back and forth to find a place to eat and sit. I sat down at 3 different places that I wasn’t allowed to sit at while I was trying to find the closest TV to watch the Heat game. We settled for some half-decent sandwiches and watched the game on my laptop before our 8-hour flight to Frankfurt.
Due to all our international travel, we have perfected our favorite seats on the plane. We boarded and got the front row for extra leg room, we put on our compression socks, had 2 water bottles, and every pillow, lumbar support, and leg rest on the market! I was counting down the hours on the flight unable to sleep while Kristen was right next to me counting sheep.
I was seated next to the cutest German couple that was intently watching us set up for the long-haul flight. Toward the end of the flight, I began chatting with the cute couple who commented on our setup. This may be my favorite part of our volleyball travel adventures is meeting new people with completely different lives, and different perspectives. They were on their way back from their 40th-anniversary cruise in Florida and around the Bahamas. They showed me where they lived in Germany on the flight map. We talked about the wife’s wedding ring which was a silver ring with their family seal on it. They even showed me their matching rings from Mexico with their initials on each. She was obviously scared of flying and he would hold her hand and wrap his arm around her during takeoff and landing. This was their 40th trip in 40 years and still completely in love!
Our third flight was an adventure of its own. We were delayed leaving the US so we were a little late into Frankfurt with only a 55-minute connection. Frankfurt is one of the largest international airports and we were terrified we would miss the connection to Poland but we just had to sit there for 8 hours and be ready for a full-on sprint when we landed.
We landed, deplaned, bused, and went into a dead sprint up and down 10 flights of stairs, almost 2 miles of airport running, and cleared customs with our backpacks and carry-on roller suitcases to arrive at our gate 10 minutes into boarding. It was a solid conditioning session straight off of an 8-hour flight. However, we didn’t even need to sprint through Frankfurt because the flight ended up being delayed. We sat next to two Polish girls who were singing Flowers by Miley Cyrus in English. This is something we find so interesting that every other country listens to music in English but Americans don’t typically listen to other country’s musicians.
At the Katowice, Poland airport were picked up by a 22-year-old student in a brand-new Range Rover. Side note: we arrange airport pickup with each tournament transportation director when the tournament entry list is announced but we never know how or where we are going and we just walk out of baggage claim and hope to find someone with a sign that says our names or Beach Volleyball World! Veronica was her name and she was born and raised in Ostrava so she was very helpful with recommendations on restaurants and must-dos. She even helped us with some basic Czech words and pronunciation. However, at the end of the 80-minute car ride, we were unable to repeat any of the words in our mind fog. We arrived at the hotel at about 4 pm local time to check in and wait for the 7 pm dinner at the hotel that was included in our nightly price.
We have learned that we have to get out of the hotel room or we will just fall asleep too early and mess up the time change even more. We looked around and found a grocery store to walk to for some water. As soon as it hit 7 pm, all the athletes in the hotel trickled into dinner within 5 minutes of it opening so everyone could eat and sleep! My body was physically at dinner but my mind was asleep still hanging out over the Atlantic Ocean. We made it to our required 8 pm time and then we both passed out. Kristen slept until 8 am the next morning while I awoke at 3 am unable to sleep again. I would periodically look over with jealousy at Kristen sound asleep. I finally got up at 8 am for breakfast and ate with fellow Americans Tri and Chaim and then Kristen who joined later.
Around 10 am, we planned to hit the gym for a workout but all of Brazil was in the tiny gym at the hotel. We decided to come back later and went out to A Café for some coffee, work, and eventually lunch. On our walk to the café, we had to stop at two stores for Kristen to curb her carbonated drink addiction, both stores failed her. We arrived at the café which was filled with people, a great sign that Kristen found yet another gem. We sipped on some great coffee, had some lunch, and made our way back through Ostrava (the third biggest city in the Czech Republic). We hopped on the 4:30 bus for our training slot with the Netherlands at 5:30. However, they were late, no bags, no balls, nothing. All they had were a pair of sunglasses and their plane clothes. The airline was delayed and rerouted them and lost their luggage so that is all they had for the next day and a half!
Our practice was run by the Netherlands’ coach, we did foreign drills, and deciphered the details of the drill with their accent! We would laugh, chat, and work our way through the chaos. We were on our way back to the hotel for some recovery flushes with the USA trainers and dinner! One of the athletic trainers who we have gotten to know well over the last year took notice of Kristen’s phone case as well and had to ask “What is that?” with a tone of complete disapproval and judgment. I explained the phone case Instagram video with breaks from myself laughing. We went back to our room for a shower and the phone rang with Brazilian Olympian, Agatha, who asked to train tomorrow morning via the hotel phone. I responded that we had a solo practice scheduled and she couldn’t understand what I was trying to tell her so we DMed via Instagram to explain that we were unavailable! We are very fortunate that most teams can speak English.
Tuesday morning rolled around and we had an early training slot scheduled to prep for our early match on Thursday. After we returned to the hotel we changed and left for our jaunt down to the city center area for lunch and exploring. We stopped in Bo Bistro for a Longo which was similar to a pizza/donut/sandwich-thing. It was weird! Then Kristen, per usual, had to pee and came across the bathroom doors. These moments made us quickly realize we are no longer in America! Which one would you have chosen?
The door on the right is the correct answer by the way! After lunch, we walked around the city to see bakery after bakery. The aroma that drifted onto the street from each location was tempting, very tempting! Kristen was very concerned about the eating habits here and asked “how is everyone eating cake at 9 am and coffee at 4 pm?”.
As we were discussing food, as we usually do with the Food Chronicle founder, I realized we dined and dashed unknowingly! I realized we up and left the bistro without paying for our meal. Without a second thought, I started speed-walking back to the restaurant to pay our dues! They had no idea that we had even left with full bellies and zero payment!
Ostrava as a whole is very clean, walkable, safe, and full of beautiful buildings! We stopped at a local café recommended to us by our driver, Veronica. It was right next to the venue, which was a very cool yet old steel mill. As soon as we walked in, the waitress switched from Czech to English at the drop of a hat! It was very impressive! We ordered “eggs in a glass” from the menu and she smiled at us and we knew it was a ‘probably don’t order that for a meal’ look! We quickly pivoted after we saw a picture of literally 3 raw eggs cracked into a glass cup. Shortly after ordering, I went to the bathroom and yet again, couldn’t decipher male/female. We loved our lunch made up of breakfast items and this café became our go-to for meals as we went back 4 times throughout the week!
As we were finishing up our lunch at CoKafe, a big beach volleyball fan from Denver strolled in. She was so excited about the event and diligently followed Kristen’s food chronicles! She gave us a great perspective on the stressful weekend of competing, she made us realize once again how truly blessed we are to travel the world together and play a game!
There were 11 American teams at the event so nearly half the people at dinner were American. We sat next to Theo and Trevor and listened to their thoughts on how much the FIVB has changed over the years in regard to the level of talent raising and the prize money falling. We have had zero experience in the “old ways” of the FIVB so we had nothing to add to the conversation. We were still just excited to be at these events after beginning our international beach careers a little over 1 year ago!
On Wednesday morning we woke up and got ready for practice. Our early morning game routine is to be up at least two hours before the match to eat and prepare. We also tried to recreate that as much as possible with the practices leading up to the event.
It is truly incredible the difference in languages, as we would sit at breakfast there were so many conversations happening all at the same time and I couldn’t understand a thing! The French/Brazilian/Italian teams could have been talking about us and I would have had no idea! We walked 15 minutes to practice and Kristen commented on how the Czech people must be really good at Scrabble with every billboard filled with a bunch of random letters. It appears that they just throw a bunch of consonances together and call it a word, and a lot of the high-scoring letters of Z, V, and K!
Gameday had finally arrived! We were the first match of the tournament, again. Who else would we play except another American duo, Cannon/Sponcil? We came out flat, we lost in two, we played timid and we didn’t attack - they did! Game number 2, we had our well-known competitors from Brazil, Duda/AP. We took the first set by storm and battled in the second but they pushed it to a third set. We had gone 3 sets with them nearly every time we played and they have not gone our way, loss #5 to Brazil!
How did we feel after day 1? Very angry, frustrated, and uneasy. We gave ourselves about 1 hour to chill, relax, chat & then we had to move on. We were down there is no doubt about that after two big losses in one day but neither one of us was willing to stay down for long! We were there to fight!
Day 2 of pool play rolled around for our match-up against Latvia’s Tina and Anastasija. We knew it was going to be a ‘win and have a chance to break pool’ or lose and head home for sure! We came out strong in the first set and on fire the second set, like I said we were down but ready for a fight! As soon as the game ended it didn’t even feel like a win. Kristen said “I hope it's enough” and I said, “I am very proud of our fight either way”. We had no idea if we gathered enough points throughout the match to break pool! It was a horrible feeling to look at Kristen with worry that 21-9 wouldn’t be enough! We broke out of the pool by 4 points! We didn’t calculate the points before the match, we didn’t know exactly what we had to score, and we just went out and played like we knew we could!
Our 11:50 am match finished at 1:37 PM, and lunch ended at 2 pm sharp. We chatted with some awesome fans from Canada that brought us a maple syrup treat. The best part about Kristen, food chronicler, and her public obsession with food is that everyone brings us little treats to try!
We grabbed our things and ran over to lunch to be served the scraps of meat left over and the mashed potatoes that were so stale the server scooped nearly the entire tray all stuck together. Kristen saw the look on my face that we needed other food and ran to our favorite CoKafé around the corner and ordered for us. We took the tournament shuttle back to the hotel for some work with physio and then dinner. On our way down to dinner our French friend on tour said, “you two came back from hell today”, he couldn’t have said it any better! At dinner, I finally got to put some of my German lessons from Duolingo to the test. I am studying German and one of the players was raving about the tempeh being “sehr lecker”, which is very delicious, so, of course, I had to try it and she was right! We finished dinner and went for our nightly stroll to recap the day, digest the dinner, and get a breath of fresh air before bed!
Late Friday night, the “draw” came out. I put the draw in quotes because it is supposed to be random as to which team we play in the round of 12 but we knew it would be Australia. We have played them, Cheng/Hughes, and Duda/AP in every single tournament. Saturday morning was another win-or-go-home situation. It is crazy to think that the round of 12 matchup with Clancy/Mariafe was a rematch from the Gold Medal match in the last Elite 16 event! That just goes to show how intense these events are with so many great teams.
We came out on top in a thrilling 3-set match! This was the first time that we had beaten them not in a gold medal match! We scurried to the shuttle stop to shower before our next match, there was no bus. We obviously didn’t read the email that they changed all the shuttle times so we hopped in an Uber with German’s Muller/Tillman.
Next up, another familiar foe, Canada’s Brandie/Melissa. We lost in 3. Thoughts after the match again consist of anger, frustration, and then deep, deep breaths into the realization that we will live to see another day. Just yesterday we were hoping to break pool and now we just finished with a 5th place in another top tier tournament! It was not our best, we made too many errors and didn’t execute in this game of inches, end of story!
We missed lunch again so we stopped in for pizza and some desserts that were staring at us all week! We made a no-volleyball-talk rule at pizza/desserts and we decided that we would explore Poland tomorrow for our free day and enjoy the moment!
After dinner, we went into Ostrava to explore a little bit and went to a local pub as they are known for their beer in Ostrava. We met a local rugby team and someone from South Africa that was ecstatic to find English speakers! He filled us in on the culture of Czechia and its conservative behavior. Also, fun fact: maternity leave in the Czech Republic is 4 years, therefore all the women are having kids very early, and a lot of them!
We shuttled to Katowice, Poland and the French coach was so concerned with the number of bags we had for just us in the car! We may overpack in comparison to other teams but we thought one checked bag, a carry-on, and a backpack would be a fair amount for a week. We checked into our hotel and then took an Uber down to the city center. We made our way through the beautiful buildings, enjoyed some Polish cuisine chosen by the waiter, and thoroughly enjoyed people-watching! It was a nice, relaxing day before chaos struck our travel day!
We arrived too early and had to wait one hour to check our bags into the airline. I was randomly selected for additional security in Frankfurt and had two police officers question me. The airline lost our baggage when we arrived in Newark and it was nowhere to be found, we tracked them with our air tags we put in our luggage and they were both still in Germany! Then we tried to check into the lounge in Newark and we walked all the way across the airport to find out we would not be admitted in! We had a long 4-hour layover in EWR and a little girl sat right next to Kristen and was spitting food at her. Then another delay from Newark to New Orleans. Monday… was a day!
Not to worry, we made it home, filed a claim to receive our luggage in the next 3 days, and then passed out!
By: Taryn Kloth
