August 12, 2008 - Even the volunteers go for the gold at the Olympic beach volleyball venue.When American beach volleyball star Kerri Walsh’s wedding ring flew off during her opening match of the Olympics, venue workers combed the sand with metal detectors to find it.

 Walsh, who is married to fellow beach volleyball pro and former NCAA champion Casey Jennings, lost the ring when she went up for a block in Sunday morning’s match against Japan’s Mika Saiki and Chiaki Kusuhara.

Some 17,000 tons of sand were brought into Chaoyang Park to create the beach volleyball venue, so if finding the ring wasn’t exactly a needle in a haystack, it was close. A video replay of the play helped narrow the search but volunteers rake the sand during the match, so that ring could have literally gone anywhere.

Despite the loss of gold, Walsh maintained her composure (one of the many differences between us) allowing her and teammate Misty May-Treanor go on and beat Japan.  Hopefully, there is more gold to come for the pair.

Filed under: Beach Volleyball by jane
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August 9, 2008 - Here are some highlights of the opening day of the Summer Games:

Beach Volleyball:
Branagh, Youngs Win Opening Olympic Match - The U.S. beach volleyball team of Nicole Branagh (Orinda, Calif.) and Elaine Youngs (El Toro, Calif.), ranked fifth, won their opening match of the Olympic Games on Saturday, defeating Netherland’s 20th-seeded Rebekka Kadijk and Merel Mooren, 21-19, 27-25, at the beach volleyball venue in Chaoyang Park.

Fencing:
Zagunis Wins Gold, U.S. Women Sweep Sabre - Mariel Zagunis reclaimed the gold medal in a repeat of her 2004 performance in Athens. Zagunis defeated teammate Sada Jacobson 15-8 to claim the gold. The U.S. women completed an historic sweep of the medals as teammate Rebecca Ward earlier won a closely contested bronze medal match.

Soccer:
U.S. women sneak past Japan 1-0 Midfielder Carli Lloyd scored on a first-half volley to lead the U.S. women’s soccer team to a 1-0 win over Japan and put the Americans’ Olympic title defense back on track at the Beijing Games.

Filed under: Beach Volleyball, Beijing Summer Games 2008, Fencing by jane
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 July 21, 2008 - The FIVB has released the preliminary round schedule for the Olympic Games Beach Volleyball Tournament beginning Aug. 9 in Beijing.The U.S team of Misty May-Treanor (Costa Mesa, Calif.) and Kerri Walsh (Santa Clara, Calif.) will begin the defense of their 2004 Olympic title with a match against Mika Teru Saiki and Chiaki Kusuhara of Japan on Aug. 10 at 9 a.m. in Beijing.

May-Treanor and Walsh finished with the most Olympic qualifying points among the women’s beach teams, but are seeded second behind China’s Jia Tian and Jie Wang, who receive the top seed thanks to an FIVB rule that says a home-country team will receive the top seed if it is ranked in the top six. Tian Jia and Wang were second in points behind May-Treanor and Walsh.

The U.S. beach team of Nicole Branagh (Orinda, Calif.) and Elaine Youngs (El Toro, Calif.) will open play on Aug. 9 against Kadijk and Mooren of the Netherlands. 

The 12,000-seat Chaoyang Park in Beijing will be the venue for the fourth Olympic Beach Volleyball Tournament, with two “Lucky Loser” matches to be played on a court adjacent to Centre Court. The top two teams of each pool advance to the knockout round of 16, along with the two best third-placed teams. The remaining four third-placed teams play two playoff matches to determine the final two places (Lucky Losers) in the Round of 16.

To view the NBC schedule for volleyball, go to www.usavolleyball.org/national/08NBC_Oly_Sched.pdf.

Filed under: Beach Volleyball, Beijing Summer Games 2008 by jane
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July 17, 2008 - Veteran middle blocker Danielle Scott-Arruda made her fourth Olympic team as the U.S. women’s indoor volleyball roster for Beijing was selected Wednesday.Scott-Arruda, 35, has been a part of the U.S. national team since 1994. She is the second woman to be named to four Olympic teams. Tara Cross-Battle played in her fourth Olympics in 2004.

Outside hitter Logan Tom, libero Stacy Sykora, middle blocker Heather Bown and setter Robyn Ah Mow-Santos all will make their third Olympic teams.

Also on the roster were opposite Tayyiba Haneef-Park, setter Lindsey Berg, middle blocker Jennifer Joines, libero Nicole Davis and outside hitters Kim Glass, Kim Willoughby and Ogonna Nnamani.

The roster is pending confirmation by the United States Olympic Committee.

Coach “Jenny” Lang Ping makes her third Olympic appearance. She was an outside hitter on the Chinese national team that won the gold medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

She also coached the Chinese women to a silver medal at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. According to the international volleyball federation, Lang joins former Hungary coach Gabriella Kotsis as the only women to coach national teams in multiple Olympics.

The team will head to California later this month for sea-level training, including an intrasquad scrimmage at the University of California, Berkeley on July 31.

The U.S. women open the Olympics on Aug. 9 against Japan.

Filed under: Beijing Summer Games 2008, Volleyball by jane
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 The Basics:

• Volleyball is played by two teams of six players on a court divided by a net.
• The object of the game is to send the ball over the net so that the opposing team cannot return the ball or prevent it from hitting the ground in their court.
• Each team has three hits to attempt to return the ball.
• The ball is put in play by a serve that is hit by the server over the net to the opponent.
• When the receiving team wins a volley, it gains the right to serve, and the players rotate one position clockwise.
• When the serving team wins a volley, it wins a point and the right to continue serving.
• The ball must clear the net on a serve.
• A game is played to 21 points or some other agreed upon number. The team that wins the best two out of three games wins the match.
• Common positions include hitter, setter, libero (defender)

Equipment: Volleyball, sneakers (indoors), knee pads (optional)

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Filed under: 101-Basics, Lingo, Playbook, Volleyball by jane
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March 08, 2008 - USA Volleyball has announced the schedule for the 2008 edition of the popular USA Beach Junior Tour. Online registration begins March 1. The tour is produced and operated by the Elevation Group of Companies and is sponsored by Spalding and Hilton.

The 2008 tour will include 10 exciting open events from coast-to-coast for all boys and girls two-person teams with players ages 10 to 20. There will also be an open championship, a tour championship, an international selection camp and a performance camp.

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Filed under: Beach Volleyball, Events, Volleyball by admin
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Feb. 5, 2008 - Over the years, there have been many great black athletes. This month, to celebrate Black History Month, we’d like to honor some of the women who have contributed to the soul of sports.

Pioneers
Althea Gibson was a pioneer in both amateur tennis and professional golf. In 1942, Althea entered and won her first tennis tournament. In 1947, Althea won the first of ten straight ATA National Championships. In 1956, she won the French Championships and, in 1957, won the All-England Championships at Wimbledon and U.S. National Tennis Championships at Forest Hills. Althea retired from amateur tennis in 1958 after she had won Wimbledon. In 1964, Gibson launched her golf career, joining the LPGA. She retired in 1971.

Another pioneer, Zina Garrison, became the first black woman to reach a Grand Slam Final (1990). She began playing tennis at the age of ten and held 20 major doubles championships before the end of her career.

Tennis
Both Gibson and Garrison are sports legends who paved the way for athletes like Venus and Serena Williams. Both sisters turned professional at 14 and have since moved up in the ranks to become two of the top single and doubles players on the circuit. In 2001, Venus won the US Open in a historically unprecedented match against Serena, sister against sister. In 2007, Serena beat top-seeded Maria Sharapova to win the Australian Open after entering the competition as the 81st seed.

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Filed under: Athletics, Basketball, General, Golf, Volleyball by jane
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Dec. 21, 2007 - In its third decade of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, The Gatorade Company, in partnership with RISE Magazine, announced outside hitter Kelly Murphy of Joliet Catholic Academy (Joliet, Ill.) as its 2007-08 Gatorade National Volleyball Player of the Year.

The award, which recognizes not only athletic excellence, but also high standards of academic achievement and exemplary character demonstrated on and off the court, distinguishes Murphy as the nation’s best high school volleyball player. A national advisory board comprised of sportswriters and sport-specific experts from around the country selected Murphy from more than 390,000-plus high school volleyball players nationwide. Murphy is now a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade Female High School Athlete of the Year Award, to be presented at a special ceremony the afternoon prior to The ESPY Awards in July.

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Filed under: High School Athletics, News Bytes, Student-Athlete, Volleyball by jane
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LAUSANNE, Dec. 19, 2007 - With the release of the 2008 SWATCH FIVB World Tour calendar, a record number of Opens and Grand Slams are scheduled on the road to Beijing.

The Beach Volleyball world season will start in Adelaide in March and will be closed by the city of Sanya, in China, with a double gender Open in November. For the first time ever, the FIVB has scheduled a record number of Grand Slams, the top Women’s and Men’s tournament which sets its prize money and bonus pool to 600,000 US dollars each.

Six different countries (Austria, France, Germany, Norway, Russia and Switzerland) will host the FIVB Beach Volleyball main events. Open and Grand Slam have been assigned to 24 cities overall, covering North and South America, Europe, Asia and Oceania. After a long bidding process, many venues are new entries in the Beach Volleyball season: cities like Osaka, Adelaide, Prague, Barcelona, Dubai and Sanya will host for the first time the Beach Volleyball world stars.

(more…)

Filed under: Beach Volleyball, Beijing Summer Games 2008, News Bytes, Volleyball by jane
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Dec. 16, 2007 - The No. 1 Penn State women’s volleyball team captured the program’s second NCAA Championship tonight, winning a dramatic five-game final, 3-2, against No. 4 Stanford in Arco Arena.

 The Nittany Lions won the thriller, 30-25, 30-26, 23-20, 19-30, 15-8, posting their 26th consecutive victory since a five-game loss to the Cardinal exactly three months ago. Penn State finished the season with a superlative 34-2 record, bringing the championship trophy back to Happy Valley to join the program’s 1999 crown.

Read more at NCAAsports

Filed under: College Athletics, College Volleyball, News Bytes, Volleyball by jane
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