Luke Melia

personal

June 15, 2002

6/15/02, 9:37 pm

It’s the Ides of June. Is there such a thing? Coming up on the longest day of the year, which I guess must be the shortest day of the year somewhere else. Peru?

Whatever the case may be, this I know… I have a new reason to love the summertime.

Beach volleyball.

It’s been a fun sport to pick up because it’s similar enough to indoor volleyball that my skills translate, but different enough that it’s a new challenge. The fact that you generally play on the beach near the ocean helps a lot, too.

I had plans to play with Matt today in a tournament in New Jersey. Unfortunately, he had to cancel at the last minute because his thesis deadline was looming large. I decided to go down on my own and try to pick up a partner during registration. I ended up playing with a nice guy named Chris, who just finished his sophomore year of high school and has been playing beach volleyball since he was twelve. His mother was playing in the women’s open division a few nets down.

A quick interlude for the uninititated on beach tournaments: The entry-level division is called B. Then it goes BB, then A, then AA, and, finally, “open.” Open is where the prize money is and where people that you might see on TV would enter. The most common formats are men’s doubles, women’s doubles, coed doubles, and mixed fours. The format of the tournaments I’ve played works something like this: You get placed in a pool with three of four other teams. You play each team twice, and the top two teams advance out of their pool to the playoffs. The playoffs are single-elimination and your pool performance determines ranking for the playoff tree.

Chris and I played Men’s B, and won all the games in our pool. Playing doubles necessitates keeping a clear head and communicating frequently and clearly with your partner. Those aren’t generally strengths of high school students, but this kid was an exception. In the playoffs, we lost in the finals and ended up taking second place in the division. I think we could have beat the team that took first, but, well, we didn’t.

Tomorrow, it’s back out to the beach to play coed doubles with Jeanhee. Woo hoo!

2 Responses to “6/15/02, 9:37 pm”

  1. dr adel chimed in:

    i need your help to get some thesis about beach volleyball
    and plyometrice training on it
    thank you

  2. lukemelia chimed in:

    Sounds like you want an expert. Most of what I know, I learned from Karch Kiraly’s book and Volleyball magazine.

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