Inside the EVP: Clearwater Beach
Beach Volleyball News - Matt Heath
The EVP tour was back on the road again this week. This time it was Cinco de Mayo, Corona Light, and Clearwater Beach...the perfect recipe for a great time.
I came down to St. Petersburg Friday morning so that I could meet up with my brother, Mike, and go through my final interview with First Investors. I am pleased to report that come August 1st I will become a contributing member of society. I guess Peter Pan has to grow up some time. I have had a great run but it is now time for me to attain some of my other life goals. So if anybody needs any help investing their retirement funds you can go ahead and contact my brother or I. And if you can't tell.this is a blatant plug, but it is my blog and I am going to take advantage of this opportunity.
When entering Clearwater, I was surprised by all the construction. I have been there countless times in the past but haven't been there recently. I was very pleased to find that the beach itself was still in its pristine condition.
It was really nice returning to Florida to play. I was born and raised two hours south in Ft. Myers. When I first started playing volleyball around the state, my family would always come to each event. My dad was known for chatting it up with everybody, while my mom was known for her noontime sandwiches and her famous cookies after the finals. Though that was a few years ago and my parents have since made the move to Pennsylvania, I was pleased to have the support of my brothers Mike, Mark and his wife Dana.
This week Jake had to stay in Carolina for Maggie's first birthday, so I had the chance to play with big Joey Cash. Joey is a 6'5" lefty from St. Pete. I don't know about any of you other players, but I hate playing against lefties, so I figured I would pick him up. For me, the key to any new partnership is communication. It is so important for new partners to talk about everything, even over talk at first. Tell each other where your perfect set is, what your tendencies are in transition or in a broken play, if you like to give the option (where your teammate has the option to give his partner a set or take the ball over on two) on free ball opportunities, etc. Over time this communication becomes less important, I played with Adam Roberts for three years...when we step on the court we hardly have to say a word, but it wasn't always like that, we had to work our way there.
Joey and I started the day shaky at best. Lucky for us we are both big guys and were able to survive our first couple rounds by out sizing our opponents. First round we played Mike Angers and Brett Becker. I have played these guys for a long time and I knew going into the game it would be tough and that they were under seeded. It's been more than once that Brett has served me right off the court. The second match put us up against Joey's old partner Mike Adamosky and his partner James Ciani. Joey told me not to worry about them and that he had this game under control...just kidding guys. Then it happened, as it always does in volleyball, I was handed my first defeat of the season by the Polish guys, Wojciech Podwojcik and Wojciech Plinski. So we were then off to the contender's bracket, where low and behold we had a rematch with Angers and Becker, who had fought all the way back to fifth place. In the cross over we ran into the other international team, a team up from Brazil, Adriano Fonseca and Fabio Guerra. It was a match up of four big guys just bombing away at each other. In the end, even though I had great fan support, the Brazilians bounced us from the tournament. Joey and I had to settle for third...sorry partner.
The Polish guys showed some steely determination and prevailed in the all-international final.
Next week I am looking forward to another crack at these teams, as I will be reunited with Jake in Miami for the first televised event of the year. We will be staying with Kenny Hahn.so it may be a must win situation for Jake to break even, because I know they will have the backgammon board out all weekend.
See you next week in Miami Beach!
