Time to Get Serious

So the 4's tournament that I talked about in my recent blog was a lot of fun. My team ended up taking 2nd. Overall, my team played fairly consistent. We had our good and bad streaks, just like any team. We had our longest bad streak in the finals though, which is the most inopportune place to have it. I'm not mad that we came in 2nd though because the team that we lost to was very strong. They had 2 very solid hitters, a solid setter that could block, and a solid defender. On my team we had 2 defenders and 2 hitters. I was one of the hitters but we decided that I should set because of my natural sand hands (I'm not being cocky here, everyone tells me that they are naturally great). Also, as setter I could block against some of the bigger hitters. It was a good plan except that then it took me out of the offense which was fairly annoying. Overall the tournament was fun and I got to work on my setting for beach and I got to work on my blocking. I definitely need to work on blocking the right side. I was for the most part late or didn't go because I cheated to my left.

Last week I had some solid practice with Bryan and Urbie, my partner. The first day we got together the sand was so hot that I am sure we all ended up with blisters on our feet. I ended up putting on a pair of Bryan's socks to help protect my feet. Tip to all of you sand players... keep a pair of spare socks in your bag for days like these. Who cares if you get a stupid tan line as long as your feet are protected from what feels like fire. No joke. Anyway, Bryan had us work on hitting and our approach. Urbie is going to be left side and I will play right. She has a cannon of an arm just like me. But she is more shotty than I am. We worked on our sharp cross and our deep line. Then we worked on serve receive. Urbie was struggling to break the habit of receiving the serve with her hands, which in sand is illegal. She has gotten better though. She has learned to keep her hands together or to move back and take it with her platform. Anyway, serve receive was really good for our first time out together. We were talking a lot and we were able to feel each other out as far as tendencies. We also have been working on finding the set that the other person likes. Urbie likes them in and a little off the net so that she can hit more shots. As for me I like them on the net. I feel like more of a threat when I know I can either pound it or roll it to a spot. The first day training together overall went very well and it made both of us very excited about playing together.

The next day I trained with Bryan and Mark, a player we met at Four Lakes, who is pretty darn good. Once again we worked on hitting and serve receive. It was more of a one on one type training with Bryan, which is always good. The main focus that day was to work on me not throwing any pity parties. I was struggling with my setting and wasn't letting go of the mistakes and Bryan had to reinforce the point that I had to let it go and stop feeling bad for myself. After I stopped pouting I was able to take his advice of squaring my body. Once I squared to where I wanted to set the sets were better. Weird how that happens, huh? Anyway, it was a solid 2 hour practice and it was solid reps. Later that day I found out that Urbie couldn't play in the tournament in Michigan that was on Saturday. I was pretty bummed out about it. But then Bryan said that if his partner fell through that he would play Men's AA with me. Yes, you read that right, Men's AA, not Co-ed. His partner ended up being able to play, but I was pretty ecstatic knowing that Bryan thought we could compete in, and win, a Men's AA division playing co-ed together.

Urbie and I were able to train for a second time last week with Bryan, and also with his partner for the Michigan tournament. We worked on serve receive again. They served us floaters, top spin, and the dreaded sky ball (a ball that is hit as high as it can be right into the sun. I hate it). Urbie and I were struggling at first. None of our passes were going to target or we would pass to target and have either a bad set or a bad hit. After a while though, even if we had a bad pass, we were able to make a good play out of a broken one. Bryan told us that if there is a broken play to send the second ball up by the net so that the hitter can hit it since there most likely will not be a block due to the bad pass. Bryan has done this multiple times with the people he has been playing with while we've been training, and for the most part has been extremely successful. Anyway, after serve receive we played some games against Bryan and his partner or another male player. We lost each game but I'm not even mad. We were playing on a higher net and Bryan and his partners play pro. They're all very smart and very skilled. It was only making us better. We had some solid defensive plays and some smart shots on offense. We were able to see it all coming together, very exciting.

So this past weekend instead of going to Michigan to play in the tournament because I was partnerless, I went up to Twin Lakes with my friend from Saturday-Tuesday. Needless to say I didn't do much training while I was up there. It was nice to just lay by the lake and enjoy summer like I used to. But I am home now and I am ready to get going. So plan of attack for this week:

Thursday: play with Urbie against some of the other girls I know so that we can see how we do on a girls net against other females.

Friday: play beach again, coed, girls, I don't care as long as we play

Saturday: play in a doubles tournament downtown with either Deanna or Kait(Urbie can't play).

This all depends on whether or not I am staying here or going on vacation with my mom up to our cabin. If I go up to my cabin then I won't be able to play Friday or Saturday which would be a bummer. But I can still train because we have some stairs I can run, lots of hills that would be great for sprints, and a beach of sand that I can do suicides in.

Next week will be filled with lots of training. Urbie's and my first tournament together is next Saturday. It's the EVP at North Avenue Beach downtown. I am pumped. We are going to play the gold division, which is the division under pro. I am excited to see how we do. :) More updates to come. Thanks for reading!

And let it begin...

I am officially home and I have officially began training for beach! I have to admit when I moved home Saturday afternoon I wasn't all that thrilled. At that point I knew college was officially over and that I would not be returning to school in August. It's such a strange feeling because now I have to create a new lifestyle from what I've known for the past 4 years. Yes, I am excited to be back home with all my friends and to begin a new chapter of my life but the expression bitter sweet fits perfectly here. The one thing I am most excited about right now is really focusing on beach and it's beach that keeps the bitter part at a low.

So I moved home Saturday and on Sunday I went out to 4 Lakes and played beach with my friends Kari, Aprille, and Karly. It was just the 4 of us and we played 8 games. It was a nice first day back. We were all getting our sand legs back so no judgements were being made when you wailed a ball out of bounce or into the net. It was also nice that we were able to change the net to women's height and we had a pair of lines instead of having to dig them with our feet. Anyway the games were competitive and there were some really good rallies. Kari and I were partners against Aprille and Karly. I have never really played beach with Kari before and it was a good experience. She was very talkative and we didn't get mad with each other. In fact I would say we complimented each other very well as players. Kari was a setter for her college and is an extremely smart player. We had a lot of fun playing together. I definitely noticed things I needed to work on. Aprille's serve definitely made me struggle. There would be streaks where I would either completely shank a serve or the pass was extremely difficult to get to. Her serve is a great floater. I would never get my body around the ball and it would hit off one side of my platform. It's my serve receive that frustrates me most so it's something I am definitely going to get extra reps in. The other thing that was noticeable was that I was using an indoor approach rather than a beach approach. You can't glide in the sand like you do indoor and that's what I was doing and my vertical was absolutely nothing as a result. All in all though it was a great first day and I had a huge amount of fun!

Tuesday I had a lesson with Bryan. Bryan McDermand is one of my good friends but he is also my coach. He is a great beach player and has such a great work ethic. He is always striving to get better. He's really someone I look up to and I love working with him. Anyway, we went out to Woodstreet and worked on fundamentals. We started off peppering and warming up. Then we worked on my dreaded serve receive. He adjusted where I start on serve receive. He had me move back and towards the sideline. That way I force the competition to serve me shorter and inside, so towards where I am going to pass. He also noticed that I don't move my feet. I tend to just lunge or pass off of a knee. He really made me focus on taking that extra step and getting my feet to the ball and making sure I turn my body to where I want to pass the ball. It was definitely a little frustrating because I feel I should be better but Bryan just reminds me that it's only my second day back on the sand. He also reminds me to keep my frustration hidden so I can't become an easy target for the other team. After I did around 50 reps for serve receive I got to serve at Bryan. He definitely is much more fluid in his passing movements than me and any frustration that he may have felt he kept hidden. He is definitely someone I can watch and learn from. We then worked on setting. As we did more and more reps my sand hands began to return. Bryan had to remind me that I want to keep the set more inside and not push it all the way out to where the pin would be. He also told me to keep my hands up and to keep my elbows at the height of my shoulder. My sets were also a bit too high so we readjusted the height of them so that they wouldn't be taken by the wind as much. Then Bryan and I switched and Bryan became the setter and I was the attacker. First thing I had to do was shorten where I take my approach from. I was taking too long of an approach and I was being late to the ball. After I shortened my approach Bryan helped me with the foot work and not gliding. He also had me use more of core when I jumped. After I took a couple approaches without the ball so I could get the feeling of the approach we worked on roll shots. He had me focus on hitting the ball towards the back corner down the line. At first it wasn't so pretty but after a couple reps I was improving and it was feeling more natural. However when we changed the shot to sharp cross along the net I struggled immensely. I tended to not put enough on the ball and it wouldn't even be close to crossing the plane of the net or I would just hit along the net on our side. Bryan reminded me that I needed to still use my wrist. I couldn't just let the ball hit my hand. I had to get my hand underneath the ball and snap my wrist. I got some good ones in but it's still something that I'll need to work on a lot. It's an effective shot and I need to master it. Overall the lesson was extremely beneficial and helpful and can't wait to keep working with Bryan.

Later that night I went and played indoor at an open gym in Elk Grove. It was competitive and fun. I always love playing beach all day and then playing indoor at night. However, that does mess with your approach because instead of consistently using a beach approach, I had to go back to using an indoor approach. I doubt I'll be playing much indoor this summer.

I also played beach yesterday. I met up with Jimmy, Timmy, Steve, Kari, and Meghan. At first we played some triples just goofing around but then we split into co-ed double teams. I played with Steve. We went undefeated, although we actually only played 2 games. I definitely felt as though my serve receive was better and my hitting improved as well from the day before. I was hitting shots and actually was able to put some oomph on the ball and actually hit it. I was fairly pleased with myself because we were playing on a men's net, which is higher than a women's obviously. My defense wasn't terrible but that's definitely something Bryan will be helping me with. I tend to cheat either short or deep and get burned a lot. Jimmy gave me a helpful hint reminding me to stay on the line where you would in indoor when the opposite is hitting so that I don't get burned on a ball landing behind me on the sideline and so that I can run through the ball. I love playing with my friends because we're all beach fanatics and everyone helps everyone. There isn't a day that I play that I don't learn something or get help with something I am struggling with.

There will be lots of blogs going up now because lots of tournaments and pickup will be happening. Tomorrow I am playing with a group of about 10 girls and then on Saturday I have a 4's beach tournament. Then next week will be some serious training because next Saturday I will be playing in a doubles pro tournament in Michigan hopefully. I may be playing women's doubles on Saturday and possibly co-ed on Sunday with Bryan. Nothing is set in stone yet but that would be ideal and amazing! I will keep you updated! Wish me luck!

Summer Is Nearly Here!

Sorry I haven't written for a while. Not much has been happening to tell you the truth. I have continued my workouts. I haven't been able to lift though. I picked up some extra hours at work so I miss my lifting times with Rico. But I have continued to run and do my sprints. Yesterday I actually did Zumba, the salsa dance workout which is pretty popular. It's pretty fun. I sweat a lot and am tired afterwards. I have the dvds but I used to take the class here at Bradley last spring with my team. It was a lot of fun. If you get a chance to try it out and you enjoy dancing I highly recommend it. :)

Anyway, this is my last week at Bradley! I graduate Saturday... I can hardly believe it! And it's funny because for the past 4 years I was excited about school being done, but now that the end is quickly approaching I am beginning to realize what I will miss. I will miss my friends that I have shared so many memories with over the past four years. We will spread out all across the country. One in Colorado, one in Indiana, one in Arizona... all over. A couple of us made a pact that we will have a reunion every year and go visit one person no matter where they are. The people that we visit will change each year. I hope we follow through with this because I am not ready for these friendships to end. It won't be the same living back at home for good now until I move out. I am so used to living with my teammates and best friends. It's something I took for granted these past four years and now with our lease coming to an end and the packing beginning, I begin to realize how sad I will be when I can't just walk across the hall into Lyndi's or Kait's room. I will miss being able to walk across the street to the soccer house which was my second home on campus.

With summer quickly approaching, I am beginning to plan out what tournaments I will partake in. I know there is a 4's tournament the 22nd and a doubles tourney the 29th in Michigan. The tourney on the 29th is a pro-level beach tournament. I am pretty pumped for it. As soon as I get home this weekend I am going to begin training so that I have a chance at winning. There is an EVP June 13th and then other multiple grass tournaments that I have been notified about. I am really excited! With being at home this summer, instead of school, I will more likely be able to play in them all. :)

As far as training goes, I don't really have a schedule. I know the 3 main things I would like to work on are blocking, serve receive, and reading the hitter. I haven't really played in a tournament yet where the competition blocks and where we need to block. I most likely will be the player that blocks on my team. I need to work on setting up the block and then turning and finding the ball. Serve receive needs to become more consistent. I rarely played all the way around in college. I was part of our serve receive pattern but I wasn't a main passer. I would get the shorter balls. I am inconsistent and need to make sure I can at least pass the ball up somewhere where my partner can get a decent bump set/set out of it. Lots of repetition and advice will help me with this. Reading the block will come with time. I plan on taking advice on this as well from other players who are more knowledgeable and experienced than me. Granted I will probably be blocking a majority of the time but I still need to know how to play defense and read the hitter. I am excited to get on the court with my partner and put in some serious time training and playing together. I hope we establish a great connection and click. Only time will tell though. And once time lets me know, I'll let you know. :)

USAV Regionals

Well this past weekend was an experience. I competed in USAV regionals this past Saturday with a team that needed another player. I was recruited to play middle. Now remember the last time I played middle was my freshman year of college so that's 3 years ago! Yes, I can still hit middle hits because even as a right side and left side I would use those attacks to surprise the other team. BUT it's the blocking that went away. So at regionals I will admit I was getting faked out or caught cheating to a certain side. Teams did get a couple of one on ones thanks to me and my lack of waiting and watching. My old coach used to say "better late than fate," meaning even if you are late to the block, close as much space as you can and go up straight and who knows, maybe you'll get a good touch or a block rather than just leaving your pin blocker all by themselves.

As for the hitting, it was rusty at first, especially because I hadn't played volleyball for at least 3 weeks and I was hitting off of a new setter. Our connection was not great at first. It was fairly frustrating because I knew my capabilities and I was not hitting like I knew I could. But as the day went on the connection got better. In fact I ended up having a couple of kills that I was impressed with. By the end of the day I was having fun! You may ask why I wasn't having fun before that. Well, you see the majority of the hitters were not able to make it to the tournament. They were missing their big outside and their two middles. So they had me play middle along with their libero, and then a ds played left side. We had 6 players so we all played every point of every set of every match. Our record for the day was 1-7 (sets). We were struggling to say the least. It was very frustrating to me. I wanted to put the ball away but with our passing struggling the middle wasn't able to be run very much. Plus we just weren't able to compete very well with other teams until our last two matches. The last two matches were enjoyable. The team seemed to find a groove and soon we were able to run middles and different plays. I think we finally all relaxed and stopped playing so tense. It was during these last two matches that I hit a girl on the top of the head off of a quick and had 2 hits from the left side that just left me smiling. It felt good to hit like how I used to. And I am pretty sure it happened because I stopped focusing on the score and our record and just went out on the court to play the game that I love.

So regionals were interesting to say the least but at least I got to play. I have to admit I woke up the next morning and my upper body was so sore! My legs were fine because of all the training I have been doing but my upper body was not having it. I needed a massage for my back, my arms, my ribs, everywhere. It was that that made me feel old. I never used to feel like that after playing. Apparently I need to start playing more than once every 3 weeks. Come May 15th I'll be playing nearly everyday and then I won't have that problem! :)

This week so far I have ran and lifted. On Monday I ran around the outskirts of our campus with my roommate Lyndi. We ran 2.81 miles in about 24 minutes. It felt good to just go out and stretch out my legs on a nice run. Lyndi and I were able to chat and catch up. Then on Tuesday I worked out with Rico, my trainer, and he said my squat form is getting better and a muscle in my leg is beginning to pop more. Both these comments made me more excited and more motivated to keep working. I really can see a difference in my legs. And when I played on Sunday, I felt like I was jumping higher which is a great thing! I definitely need to get a better vertical for beach. Wednesday I ran with Lyndi again. This time we ran 2.6 miles. The time was around 28. It just wasn't a good day of running for me. I was struggling a bit. I love when I have good days of running and hate that I have bad days of running. Tomorrow (Thursday) I am going to return to my hill and my sand sprints. I think I will do 8 sprints up the hill and then work my way up to 4 suicides in a row in sand, so total it will be 16 suicides in the sand. And to run to the park it's a half mile, so I will have run a mile regular as well. I am going to be tired but feel oh so good!

The girls on the team here at Bradley, so my old team, just finished up spring season today. So now I will have some people to play beach with. A couple of them are excited to play with me and do the workouts with me as well. I can't wait to get some competitive doubles going on. It won't happen this weekend though. I am heading home for a wedding on Sunday! I am so excited. It's my best friend's sister's wedding. :)

I hope everything is going well with you all! I will update again soon! Like always, if you have a question just post it and I will answer it!

Keep On Keeping On

This week has been an exhausting one for me! Between school, workouts, and this new restrictive carb thing I'm trying I am absolutely beat. I just finished my senior project last night with my group. We had to create a 37 page plan book for an advertising campaign on State Farm. Last night we were in the library until 12:30. The night before, I was there until it closed. Guess what time our library closes... 4AM! I am still recovering.

I did my hill and sand sprints on Monday. I go every morning around 9:30 and I always see the same man walking up the hill that I run. The other day he asked me if I was training for the Olympics. I said you know it! He made my day. If that's not inspiration I don't know what is. :) I lifted on Tuesday without Rico because he has been up in Chicago for a family emergency. So he sent me my workout over email and I went into the gym and got it done by myself. Usually when I go in I am the only girl in the area with all the heavy weights. I love it. Yesterday, the day after my extremely long night, I decided to relax. I didn't want to kill myself. So today I am going to go lift and then go for a nice 2 mile run.

This weekend I am heading home to play in USAV Regionals, an indoor tournament. I was trying to play on a USAV team this year and go to Nationals but it was too expensive and my team and I were struggling to find sponsors. So we decided that this year wasn't our year and we would try again next year. It's bittersweet because now I can train for beach earlier, but now I'm not going to Phoenix with the rest of my friends that have teams. Anyway, like I said I am going home to play in Regionals with a friend's team. I get to play middle. I haven't played middle since my freshman year. Granted I still run middle attacks but the blocking is what is going to get me. Hopefully I can close to the pins. It will be an experience, a fun one I am sure. I will write a post about how that went next week.

Yesterday I got some upsetting news. Bryan McDermand informed me that the EVP we were planning on going to in Naples switched to just women. How does that effect me? Well technically it doesn't have to but Bryan and I were both going to go play. I was going to treat myself to a graduation gift and go play at this tournament. But since they don't have a men's division anymore Bryan can't go. So upsetting. I was so excited to go play an EVP in a different state, especially Florida! We do have a plan for that weekend though, the good old Blind Draw at Four Lakes. It's a 4's sand tournament where you get placed on a team with random people, hence Blind Draw. It's an all day event with food. There are always pick up matches going on so I am excited for that. It'll be my first one in 2 years. I never got to go to one last summer.

I am getting more and more excited as the days past. Summer is approaching quickly! I have one more week of normal class and then finals begin. After finals I move back home and then BEACH TRAINING BEGINS! I have a couple of different people in mind for partners (thanks to Bryan). I hope we connect. If I can find the right partner I have no doubt that I can make it far in beach, but only time will tell. :) Look for my next post on Sunday or Monday!

Where I Came From and Where I am Going

Hello everyone! My name is Amy Reichel. Nick asked me to blog about what I am doing in order to make it to the professional level in beach volleyball. I, of course, accepted. Before I catch you up on what I have been doing I'll tell you a little bit about my past.

I started playing volleyball in 7th grade. I only played for school though. In high school I made the sophomore team as a freshman and my sophomore year through my senior year I was on the varsity team. I started club my freshman year at GLC Select, a branch of Sports Performance for multi-sport athletes. I went back to GLC my sophomore year but got an invite to try out for Sport Performance's 16-1's team and play under Ping. In order to do that I had to stop playing basketball and commit 100% to volleyball. I ended up making the team. To this day I still believe that Ping is the reason I am as good as I am. He worked with me before every practice on my arm swing. Most the time I wasn't even jumping and swinging. It was strictly hand contact and trying to hit the ball in the same spot on the wall. My junior year I made the 18-3 team at Sports Performance. Then my senior year I moved to Sky High and made the 18-1's team. All through out high school I played middle and got recruited by Bradley University to play middle.

My freshman year at Bradley I played middle for the majority of the year and contributed to the team right away. Toward the end of the season I was switched to the right side because the slide was my most powerful attack. My sophomore year I played right side the entire season. I enjoyed it. I loved running slides and coming around for a quick or a 2. Then our coaches were fired and we got a new set of coaches. My junior year I was switched to left side. It was completely new for me but I enjoyed it. It took me a while to get my timing down because I was always used to the quick approach. My junior year I had a lot of kills but also a lot of errors. It was a learning year for me. My senior year I was switched between right side and left side until our big freshman left side hurt her shoulder. Than I became left side again permanently. I was a lot smarter with my shots and hits. I still had quite a few errors but I had teams that would triple block me or not even pay attention to our middles. I was Bradley's go-to hitter and other teams knew it. It was a lot of pressure. I took it as a challenge though and did the best I could. I ended my career at Bradley as number 15 on Bradley's all time career kill list, I was the Country Financial Scholar Student-Athlete of the week twice, and was a Honorable Mention Missouri Valley Conference Scholar-Athlete as well.

Now that I am done with volleyball at Bradley I am on to bigger and better things! I am currently training for the approaching beach season! I got into beach about 3 years ago. I have competed in EVP tournaments at the BB level. This year I am going to try competing in Gold, one level below Pro in the EVP. I am going to train with a new partner this summer because my previous partner and I just couldn't click on the court. When we would get into a slump we could not get out of it. Anyway, this spring I have been hitting the gym hard to work on my legs and work on some fast twitch muscle and to help my vertical. I have a trainer who has me doing squats, dead lifts, lunges, and other leg exercises. I work on legs every Tuesday and Thursday. I have already seen a difference in the power in my legs and am extremely excited to test them out once season hits. Monday, Wednesday, and then either Saturday or Sunday I do sprints in the sand and also up a hill. It's intense and hard but it's worth it. When I get tired I just think about where I want to go and what I want to accomplish. It's amazing how a dream can help give you that little bit of extra that you need at the end of a workout.

I am going to be posting blogs about what I am doing in my training. They will get more exciting once summer hits and I am back home and can train with my partner and tournaments approach. Until then I hope you can bare with me while I continue training here at Bradley. There are a lot of exciting things to come and I am very optimistic about this summer and where it will take me. I hope you join me on this journey! If you have any questions just ask! :)