Volleyball Takes Cardinals to Red Square
May 17, 2001 | Women's Volleyball
May 17, 2001
By Nancy Smith
.... As we last left our Cardinals they were putting the hurt on their wallets in Berlin's designer shopping boulevard. That evening, the team played the Police Sponsored Volleyball Club at a Polizei Academy and won 3-1. It was an interesting feeling to be taken to the match in a yellow polizei van to say the least. However, the women on the team were extremely nice and entertaining. They did have somewhat of a home court advantage as the SportsHalle soon filled with off-duty polizei who had a cheer that sounded eerily like their distinctive sirens (Think of the Anne Frank Movie or The Sound of Music when the Nazis were chasing the Von Trapps) They took us to a outdoor biergarten where they were incredulous that we would only drink Cokes .... but more on that later, as I am in a Russian Internet Cafe and on a strict time schedule ....
Immediately upon landing, the team immediately knew Russia was much different that Italy, Austria or Germany. It was almost like a stereotype as we came down the stairs into the customs area. Long lines for our entrance visas with just two booths being operated by two blonde women who looked alot like shaved grizzly bears ... only surlier. An English-speaking Russian business man gave us excellent advice. "When you are in Russia remember two things. Number one: nothing is quick and number two: expect the worse." At that point we headed to the women's bathroom where there was no toilet paper and the empty roll was tied to the wall with a piece of straw. A small fire broke out in a garbage can outside the bathroom adjacent to the visa line but no one would dare leave their place in line to put it out and the two grizzlies seemed unfazed by this.
Thoroughly spooked at this point, the Cardinals emerged on the other side of the customs chutes and were joyfully greeted by Marina Sinichenko, our former player and current administrative assistant. She was there along with Anastasia Zaitseva's parents and the delegation from the MSCA Volleyball Club. We quickly loaded the bus and headed into Moscow traffic. We firmly believed we had seen the pinnacle of crazy driving from the Autobahn and our brief but high-velocity stint in Italy. The craziest German driver is a piker compared to the average Muscovite. Lines on the road seem to be merely gentle suggestions as the drivers crowd five across three lanes. Dmitri, our bus driver, may have an ancient but lovingly maintained bus but in 18 years of riding team buses I have never seen such a masterful job in negotiating in wild traffic.
We circled the outskirts of Moscow and headed into the country. The MSCA Volleyball training camp (or the Compound as they translated it for us) was an hour and a half from the city limits. The roads kept getting narrower and narrower and the countryside poorer and poorer. The ramshackle houses are reminiscent of the Deep South but you have to wonder how they survive the winters in such flimsy housing. We felt not unlike Marines going to boot camp only we were recruits in spandex rather than BDUs.
They had an American flag waving at the compound which is a converted Pioneer Camp (sort of like Russian Boy and Girl Scouts. They have several dormlike buildings and a mess hall with elaborate mosaic murals everywhere depicting happy pioneers. There is a large multipurpose building with two volleyball floors, a weight room, elaborate sauna, gymnastics room weight room and pool. And by pool, I mean ... well ... an indoor body of water. The pool was probably a lap pool as it is no deeper than four feet and again has the beautiful mosaic walls depicting undersea life. However, the pool itself has only occasional tiles left and although we were reassured that the water was clean it looked mossy with a cloud of mosquitos.
We were excited to find that our dorm area had a wide screen tv and vcr and we were able to finally watch the final episode of Survivor II as we devoured our German bought treats. The girls were so homesick we even watched the commercials and all cheered when we saw Coach Pitino talking about the Derby! However, there is but one rotary phone on the grounds and we were each allowed three whole minutes on it. Did I mention the carnivorous mosquitos?
After a outing to Red Square and the Kremlin and the Church of Jesus Resurrection there was a bilingual practice conducted by Coach Yelin with the members of the MSCA team. They all did drills designed to flex their communication skills as well as their body muscles. We were amused that Jing Ding was the best at communicating. She explained that in her first year of setting when she was under stress on the court, her English would sometimes leave her and she got good at directing people by hand signals. The mosquitos were not a factor in practice.
The team got up and practiced before an excursion to the Pushkin museum of fine arts today. A discussion forum with some Russian students was cancelled when the director of the Academy had to leave. Instead, Evgeny (by the way, all of Coach Yelin's friends and associates at MSCA are either named Evgeny or Leonid as far as we can tell) took us to a mall in the heart of Moscow that looked alot like Oxmoor only a lot more dramatic statuary and fountains around. We had dinner at TGI Friday's and found the internet cafe and probably overtaxed the system with a sudden influx of outgoing email as they rushed in to bridge the communication gap.
The travelogue will continue in more detail as I hope to be able to return here to file. A note to Emily Roberson's family. She got a cut on her finger in a weightroom mishap and had an eye-opening experience with the current state of medicine in rural Russia. Don't worry, she is fine and Hale Abubo, our trainer, has everything under control. Emily has been a trooper and had to be talked out of practicing. (We considered her voted off the tribal council however, in a salute to Survivor.
