First Real Day at Volleyball

The games are now very much underway and I've just finished my first day as an ONS Flash Quote Reporter. All the work and trouble that we've gone through since last October has now finally accumulated into this. It was worth every second.

My day started off with the host country China playing against an obviously outmatched Venezuelan women's team. Just a few days ago we were able to interview the Venezuelan squad and the scary thing was the fact that most of the athletes on that team were quite a few years younger than us. There are at least four members of the team who are under 18 and the oldest player is 25.

China was able to save most of its energy, as they played the entire match with mainly an even mixture of starters and second-string players. Post-game mixed zone was quite possibly the most chaotic thing I've witnessed in my life. Chinese media mobbed each and every player that walked through the zone and hearing the soft-spoken Chinese girls was like listening for a single raindrop in a thunderstorm. I was quite disappointed as I wasn't able to get the quality quotes that I was used to getting in the much less frantic training sessions. I did managed to redeem myself by being a useful copy-taker.

The second game of the evening was a much more evenly matched USA versus Japan. The US women were heavily favored to win the game, but it was common knowledge that Japan wasn't just a pushover. It was obvious that this was going to be a game where every point counted as neither team managed to push their lead to over five points throughout the first-set. Halfway through the second set, which Japan managed to win, we learned of the news that Todd Bachman father-in-law of the USA Men's Volleyball head coach was brutally murded earlier that evening. The news is a complete shock, and it completely undermines that purpose of the Olympic games.

The rest of the evening was extremely frantic as we ran back and forth from mixed zones, ONS offices and Press Conference room. It ended up being a late night but it was worth it.