A painfully fun day for the weekend warriors

On my first day in the office a coworker told me "we have a volleyball tournament on April 12th, I already signed you up." I immediately thought about how much I dislike volleyball, especially competitive volleyball, and replied "sounds good." It was explained to me that the tournament is sponsored by the biggest insurance company in Sweden, and that this company has created some sort of "insurance league." Meaning all of the other big insurance companies (or financial service companies that provide similar services) are invited to put forth a team of their workers to play. I was also told that there was a bar near the gym, a pizza party following the match play, and some sort of music trivia. That made my commitment seem a little bit better, but I was still pretty reluctant to play.

About a week later the same coworker asked if Miranda would want to play. I know she's a bigger fan of both recreational sports and social functions than I am, so I volunteered her to play. Apparently that was against her wishes, but she was a good sport about it.

So my office entered two teams, a good team including our most competitive coworkers and a former coworker and his friends who play on a professional team, and then the rest of us. I begged to be placed on the bad team, and am quite happy with the decision.

So, the B-team looked like a pretty sorry bunch. We were out there in mismatched clothing, doing our best to bump and set the ball to each other, but instead sending the ball in the wrong direction about 40% of the time. To be honest, my other three coworkers on the court could hold their own. Basically, Miranda and I sent the ball in the wrong direction 100% of the time, and the other three made up for our mistakes...that's how I get to 40%.

Then we saw our opponents. They were all dressed in matching black uniforms with their company logo on the chest. Stereotypically Swedish in every way...stylish, fit, blond, and quite serious. They were all sporting knee-pads and court shoes, and doing warm-up drills with Eastern European efficiency. Based on their team huddles you knew they meant business.

Then the next fifteen minutes were a blur, but apparently our chaotic style confused them because we managed to pull off the win.

The rest of the day seemed to take forever (the tournament ran from 9 am to 6:30 pm). Don't get me wrong, it was a good time, but by the time we completed the second match we were so red and bruised that we had no desire to keep playing. Unfortunately, the first two games were just set up to seed us in the double-elimination tournament. We lost number two, earning us a game against Mercer's A team. We might as well have forfeited, and wanted to forfeit after watching Mercer's pros spike the ball in their warm-ups, but in competition they were quite nice and pretended they didn't know how to spike or place the ball. They still beat us painfully quickly, but didn't do anything to hurt our bodies or our pride.

Miranda had to drop out before the fourth game. Her bony arms were too black and blue to even consider bumping another ball. In my mind, the fourth game was our best as a team. That had nothing to do with Miranda's dropout and everything to do with the fact that it took us three games just to figure out what we were doing on the court. We still got our butts kicked, but we were able to keep the volleys going and pass more effectively...just weren't able to convert that play into points.

Mercer's A team went on to win it. The semi-final and final both came down to the last point, (in international scoring you can get a point even if you don't serve, and you don't have to win by two) so the games were pretty intense. It was funny to see the pros turn up the heat, but apparently the competitors had some pros as well, because both sides had to work pretty hard for their points.

After the tournament everybody seemed to loosen up a bit. Apparently Swedes aren't very social in competitive situations. Most weren't too social towards Miranda and me either, but that was probably because we didn't even know how to start a conversation in Swedish. The setting did lighten up though. We played some pool, sat through the music trivia in Swedish, (Miranda and I even helped our respective teams with a couple questions on Melodifestivalen) and after a while Miranda got roped into the game "runt ping." So runt ping is basically the party form of ping-pong. Everybody grabs a paddle and lines up on each side of the table. One person serves, then runs to the end of the line on the other side of the table. The person at the front of that line returns the serve and runs as well. When someone makes a mistake everyone stops, the person nearest the ball re-serves, and the game continues. Once an individual makes two mistakes they're kicked out. As more and more people get kicked out the players end up just running in a circle around the table. The final two players play a best of three match. It's actually ridiculously entertaining to watch, but quite fun as the Swedes are quite good at ping-pong and many take runt ping quite seriously.

My arms were better in about a day. Miranda's bruises still don't look the best, but she's actually healing quite nicely after five days. It was fun, but I hear the summer tournament is beach volleyball and isn't co-ed. The guys supposedly play full-force, so I think I'll just attend as a spectator.

Sorry for the long post (and the excessive use of the word "quite"). Believe it or not this is the super abridged version.