Swedish Cup Champs!

Ladies and Gentlemen may I present for the first time ever to the Vingaker Volleyboll Klub a first place trophy as champions of the Swedish Cup! As Matte, a hotel worker in the kitchen aged 19 and recently engaged put it, "you've played, what? 4 or 5 matches and have already won Vingaker its first ever trophy? Things are looking good." Here is a picture of our team, minus Dave and I. We took a more recent shot, but they haven't posted online yet. The team looks small because all the tall guys are kneeling, but I'm still the 3rd tallest. The important players in the cast of "My Life in Sweden" are #6 Tarik, #1 Tobey, and #10 Erik. I'll post the names of all the guys by number at the bottom.

This is the site of this past weekend's Swedish Cup, a sort of early season tournament which means absolutely nothing, except for a shiny silver trophy and bragging rights. This is a pretty good example of the gyms we play in, but some are a bit nicer. This looks about like our home gym in Vingaker. We have our first home match on Sunday, which I'll be sure to update on.

We won our semi-final match against Team Valla in 4. A great win for our young program which is flakey at best, sometimes good, sometimes terrible. It's nice to see that we can beat a good team. We played pretty well as a team, although I got a lot of sets and hit for a good percentage. Finished the night with 22 points on 18 kills, a few aces and a block. Again, as Matte put it, "people were wondering where we got the money to host a professional, but they're all convinced it was a good investment." Well shit, it's a marathon, not a sprint! The town is ALL about winning though. They maintain a pretty firm "Win now or don't win at all: attitude. Let's hope the body holds up, huh?

Here is our libero posing triumphantly with the trophy we won after CRUSHING the team from Solentuna 3-0, the same team that we beat in 5 the last time we played them. They had their "professional" from Brazil this time around and we still managed to hand it to them. The sets were well distributed. I finished with 13 points on 10 kills and 3 blocks, one point behind Erik, our smaller middle, who went on a blocking and serving rampage amidst his splendid night of hitting.

Here is Linus (pronounced LEE-nuss) happily stretching after the match. He's a great guy, shy, who apparently gets PISSED if he's not playing well, though I've never really noticed. He speaks great English and likes me, but doesn't want to talk much. On the other hand is Erik, who can't get enough of me or himself. "Oops, Paul, I dropped my medal, let me pick it up while you take my picture." He's fantastic. Probably my favorite of all the guys here. Those are his parents in the background, visiting from up north for his birthday. We played a sing-a-long game 2 nights prior. Great people. Erik is coming to work beach camp so he "can show off his beaUtiful legs to all of Los Angeles." My opinion of Vingaker, the Swedish Cup, the guys and everything over here in Sweden? Two thumbs up!

#4 Anders, #6 Tarik, #3 Boulin, L Roban, #13 Linus, #12 Vedad, #7 Jonas, #5 Thomas, #11 Oscar, #9 Hampus, #1 Tobey, #10 Erik. These are their nicknames or how they are pronounced in Swedish. Don't quote me on it.