Hello All,

Continuing with good news….we won tonight against Vicenza in three. Woohoo! All praises go up. Tomorrow we are off. Monday we will travel to Perugia for the first of the best of three final series of the League Cup. We are blessed to have an opportunity to finish the season strong. Although we didn’t do as well as we would have like in the league, nor did we meet our two goals for the European Cup or Italian Cup, we find ourselves still fighting until the end now with the hope of getting this title.

Tonight I think I experienced a first of my career. I didn’t attack one single ball in the entire first set nor my first three rotations in the second set! Now that’s incredible. But we won that set and the match so that’s what is most important. I had to do a lot of self talk to stay focused on blocking, touching balls, celebrating each play (well that comes naturally) and other things that I could control. And to continue driving and be ready for whenever I might be given a set. I hit the first ball out! BOO! Another strange thing happened during this match…I was set a 2 ball in transition. Now that brought back memories. When I returned to the National Team in ’98 (I took a couple summers to try my hand at the WNBA), I was set a medium high set in the center of the net during transition or bad serve receive passes. Ahhh, those were the days. I got a kill by the way, hehehehehe. Even though I didn’t participate a lot in the attack I am happy with my performance and even more so with the teams. OH yes and of course the victory! Each person contributed in some form or other, truly a team win.

Well, that’s it for now.

GO CHIERI

Danielle