A Coalition of the Volleyball Willing...

There was a volleyball tournament yesterday--quite an international event around here. In fact, the first tournament that my unit had a team in, several weeks ago--we came in third overall, which wasn't too bad for our first time playing together, and there were some very good teams there.
The Tongan marines guard the Al Faw Palace, the main headquarters for the US military in Iraq (Note that the photo below has been slightly modified for security reasons, but the basic look of the place is spot on. Of course, it usually doesn't look THIS good, you have to get it at the right time of day when the sun AND dust are low.)


They--the Tongans--supposedly have an excellent team, but they don't play on Sundays, so I haven't had the chance to play with them yet. The Samoan contingent is quite impressive, these are US Army (and one Navy) who all happen to be from Samoa and have put together a team--these dudes are big, the nets are low... they don't even jump, but they block just fine... The Samoans did a bit of chanting too--with every point they made a chant leader would call out the chant and the rest of the team would fall in--kind of a call and response thing with a bit of symbolic dancing thrown in to boot! The Samoans (not the girl scout cookie, S'moas) came in second.

The winning team in that first tourney was a group of civilian contractors from Nepal--this team was small, quick and had clearly played together quite a bit--they picked up every ball and returned it flawlessly...

There was a fine group of Puerto Ricans too, they weren't playing volleyball though, they were singing. Evidently they gather at the MWR center every Sunday afternoon and set up food and giant loudspeakers with microphones and a computer with MP3s... playing and singing salsa music all afternoon. These guys know how to have a good time!

And, I should mention that the Ugandan team didn't show up for the first tourney either, but we benefitted greatly from one of their players subbing in on our team--this guy had mad hops and great volleyball skills--I hope their entire team doesn't play like that or we are in trouble if we ever meet up with them!!


Yesterday was another story--we dominated! Navy team--bam! Marine team--bam! Joint team--bam!! Estonian team--bam!! We had to play the Estonians again in the finals, and we had been sitting for a while when that match came up, so we dropped the first game, but then we kicked it up a notch and BAM!! We took the entire enchilada. The victorious, steadfast Task Force 62 Medical Brigade volleyball team: