permalinkGold, Gold, Silver, Gold
August 24, 2008
At the Busam household, we've been following the Olympics, especially Volleyball, very closely for the past couple weeks. It's been an incredible set of matches, with success that Devin may never see again. Here's our take on the proceedings.Women's Beach - As expected, May/Walsh brought it home easily. The only story was if they'll be back for London. There are plenty of examples out there of teams having kids then coming back strong, I think they'll be back.
Men's Beach - Our second-best chance for gold, Dalhausser/Rogers brought it home. We were scared after they didn't look like they wanted to be there in the first match, but turned it on after that. Much has been made of Phil taking over, but Todd's play has been overlooked. Down 6-1 in the first game, he decided to start hitting for the first time in the tournament, and sided-out toe for toe with "Jaws", no easy feet, which I think was the key to the match. I thought the "serve the big guy" strategy they used was crazy, but sure enough, it pad off handsomely in the third set.
Women's Indoor - Our longest shot at a medal, this team should be ecstatic with a silver. Brazil was just too good, and the team couldn't hold it together to keep a sweep in play. After flying to Boston, I was hoping to finally watch a match live, but no, it was bumped to 6 hours later.
Men's Indoor - Wow! After beating Brazil in Brazil for $1,000,000 a couple weeks before the games, this team was looking good. The way they came together was amazing. Every opponent in the playoffs had a better hitter (or hitters) then the US, but steady fundamentals won out. The word "scrappy" comes to mind as they did whatever it took to win. I can't count how many teams I play on would come together and say "nothing touches the floor" near the end of a close match, but I've never seen that happen until this team showed us it could be done. The only bad part about this match was the 17 hour tape delay, then being cut in half. I think it would have been a nice touch to have Karch hand out the medals, but I suppose Ruben had to have one last moment before he retired.
It's a long wait until London, and I'm sure it'll be a very long time until we see an overall performance like this again, so we were glad to soak up every moment.