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Yeeeeeeeees! My first Olympic win. Sheez that felt good! I’ll remember that feeling for a long time. Warming up on the outside court and hearing the crowd in the stadium and getting butterflies every time. MD’s pep talk before we entered the stadium. Skipping into the stadium after Geeter’s intro. Putting away an overpass to get out the nerves for point 1.
Warmed up in the pouring rain and then it came down harder in the match. Hardest rain I’ve ever played in by far. FIVB Brazil final 06 was 2nd and we didn’t handle the rain very well in that match but I think I learned a few things in this one: First you can’t hit the side of the ball at all. I forget how much we chop the ball in our sport by hitting one side of the ball to control it one way or the other. Hand would just slip right off the ball and I hit 2 line hits out trying it against NED last night. Second hand setting and jump serving is near impossible. With rain pelting you in your eyes its hard enough just to see the ball. And third just want it more. That’s what we kept telling each other.

The match was great to win and now I wish the Dutch the best of luck. “Super Thin Beast” and Bram (Boersma n Ronnes) are good friends of ours and I hope they can get out of pool play. They are a great team and went 3-0 against us last year. We got 2-0 now this year so we owe em 1 more.

Anyways, I’m fired up to play the Germans tonight! It’s a big game for both teams and we’re gonna come out with some fire.

BTW MD’s pep talk before the match. He said “everyone feels nerves and there are two ways to handle it. You can deny you feel them and fight it until it consumes you. Or you can embrace it and go out and have the time of your lives.” I had the time of my life!

       

Ok so that was cool! I went to practice today and “Dubya” was there standing on my court. Yeah George W Bush! I was asking Rodgy (who was on our practice court at the time) if that was the court we had reserved and someone called my name. I turned around and was looking straight at Dubya himself. MD, Rosie and I stood there and talked to him for like 5 to 10 min. He asked me my story of where I’m from and we talked basketball a bit. What stuck out to me was that he was super engaging and into the conversation at hand. He didn’t look like he had places to be, which he obviously did, but he stood and talked about how tough the sport of beach volleyball is and how hard it is to move in the sand for him.
Now Opening Ceremonies was incredible! Long but incredible! We got our uniforms on and went with all the USA athletes to a holding area. This was maybe the coolest time of the night for me because we were with all the athletes from all the different sports. The Mens basketball players were the stars of the group for sure. They were all super cool and took endless photos with all the athletes. I talked to my two favorite Jazz players D Williams and Carlos Boozer. Both were super legit.
We then went to another holding arena. This time with all the other countries and waited for our turn to walk towards the Birds Nest. We finally got into the tunnel and you could hear the crowd and I felt like I was walking into the Coliseum. MD, Rosie and I got to walk together and it will be a feeling I will remember for the rest of my life. All the athletes chanted USA as we entered the arena. What an honor!
Well now that is all over and it is time to compete. I can’t wait to get out there tonight and fight for every point.
Jake

 

Aug 4, 2008:

Well I’m in San Francisco on my way to Beijing.  Can’t wait to get there and check out the Olympic Village and the volleyball venue.  Mom n Dad and Coleman came over to last night to wish me well.  Can’t believe Cole is gonna have a child by the time I get home.  He’s seems excited. I’m traveling with EY n Nicole, Mike Dodd, Rosie and a couple of USA Volleyball staff.   There’s a fun aura within the group.   Lot’s of hope I guess.   It’s been crazy to see how many people get behind you for the Oly’s. I’m off and can’t wait to see the family when you all get here.
Jake

Aug 5, 2008:

Wow I arrived about 4 hrs ago.   There is a layer of smog/pollution that you wouldn’t believe.   Landing you can’t see the ground until you’re just above the tree line.   You can’t see more than like 4 or 5 blocks ahead.
I gotta write later about how fun this has been so far.   The smog just stuck out at first, but I’m giddy!
Jake

Aug 6, 2008:

I haven’t worn the carbon filter mask yet.   No one seems to be wearing them and I haven’t heard any horror stories??   I might still throw it on every once in a while.

I was trying to write last night but had to go to orientation.
This place is pure energy!   It’s so killer walking around the village with all these amazing athletes and trying to guess what they do.   The village is a brand new apartment complex that’s huge.   They will rent them out for “high end” housing after the Olympics.   The ‘birds nest”, which is where Opening Ceremonies and track n field will be held, is insane.   It looks like something from an animated movie.   They completely take care of us here.   We have food cafeteria with any type of food you could imagine.   From McDonalds to Chinese food to breakfast cereals etc…   The Americans have basically two apartment building to ourselves.   All the individual countries hang flags from their rooms balcony.   Everyone wears their countries uni’s or Olympic gear.   Dirk Nowinski was in the cafeteria today with his German team.   Rafael Nadal came through the airport when we did.   He was absolutely mobbed like you wouldn’t believe by paparrazi.   They give us these little coke bottle key chains that you swipe at any coke machine to get cokes, water, gatorade etc.   They want to keep us hydrated cause it’s so freaking humid and hot here.   Even at night I had to take off my jacket outside.   We are rooming right next to the woman’s Dive team.   They are all 5 footers but cute and told us they almost went into beach volleyball!?   Joking around obviously.
We share an apartment with Mike Dodd and Troy Tanner (Misty n Kerri’s coach).   Rosie n I share a room and they both have their own until Phil n Todd get here tomorrow.
Coming through the airport they fast lane all the athletes through customs then we are taken by bus into the athlete’s village with police escort.   The USOC guide was telling us how much the Chinese governmemnt has done as far as cleaning up this place like with painting old building along to route to the games etc.   It looks amazing and they are definitely ready for the world.   The Chinese helpers couldn’t be any nicer and they all love any attempt at “Shay Shay” (thank you) or Knee how (hello).   Those are written how you pronounce it not spelled correctly I’m sure.

I’m gonna go work out now.   They have a nice gym for us and I get to go train on center court tonight.   It’s good cause all our games are at night.   During the day would and will be brutal with heat and humidity.

Anyways, I’m sure there’s more to come, but the first 20 hrs have been unbelievable!
Jake

Croatia! Wow, it’s just how I remember it — cold and rainy. Rosie and I played our very first FIVB World Tour event here in Croatia two years ago and took a 25th. That’s right, a 25th. Our worst finish ever together, and it happened to be our first FIVB event together. It was brutal really, because that 25th kicked us into the country quota and put the team of Dax Holdren and Sean Scott in the main draw as the third U.S. team. I remember leaving this place maybe the most disappointed I had ever been in my volleyball career. I had worked so hard the year before with Stein to get solid into the main draw, and Sean and I threw it away in one tournament. Just ask my wife, Jane, and she’ll vouch for me that I did not come out of my house for three days wondering what happened.For those that don’t know, the FIVB allows four U.S. teams in any event — three are in the main draw, and the other team has to come through the qualifier, even if they are a top-24 team in the world. If there are more than four teams that come over for an event, then the USA teams have to play in a country-quota match where the winner gets rewarded with a spot in a gnarly qualifier with some really good international teams. For example, Sean Scott and Nick Lucena flew over to Italy last week just to play Casey and Furby in a country-quota match and then had to go home without a paycheck and, even worse than that, not playing another international team. The system is brutal and, in my opinion, flawed. Why not play that country-quota match at home in the USA and save the losing team time and money. Anywho, you can now see why I was so bummed to have taken a 25th two years ago, because I had all that country-quota fun ahead of me.

Well, it’s been two long years since then, and a lot has happened. The next FIVB event was the Gstaad Open, which we got a wild card into and finished fifth. That put us back in the main draw, and we haven’t relinquished that spot since. We are now trying to secure a spot for the 2008 Olympics. Phil and Todd have locked up the first spot, and we are in a battle with Stein/Mike and Casey/Furby for that second spot. We might not find out until July who will get to go to Beijing.

A quick note on what we’ve been doing the last three weeks. We left right after the AVP Crocs Tour Cuervo Gold Crown Huntington Beach Open and went straight to the airport to fly to Prague. Prague was unbelievably beautiful and is one of my favorite cities in Europe. It helps that we won the event, but I think I would feel that way regardless. We had a great dinner on Sunday night on the river overlooking Charles Bridge. It was a moment.

Then, we were off to Abruzzi, Italy, which is a great, low-key, little beach town. We loved it there and ate some of the best food I’ve ever had. Why can’t anyone in the U.S. make a pizza like that??? I guess it’s the same reason hamburgers suck outside the U.S. We finished ninth, which was hard to swallow after our first-place finish in Prague. After spending a few days in Rome, we came to Croatia late last night, and I’ll let you know if this place grows on me by the end of the week. I doubt it.

Can’t wait to get to Hot-Lanta for the AVP Atlanta Open!

Well I forgot to write about my 2 weeks of the winter tour.  What a great time!  It was much more laid back atmosphere because the four mens players decided to spit the money.  We got to play volleyball for no other reason than to just play.  It reminded me of why I started playing this sport in the first place, which was because I just loved competing and having fun with friends.  Each night right after the event we would load up in the rock star bus they had waiting for us and we’d be off to the next city.  We would travel anywhere from 2 to 8 hrs that night and then perform again the next night.  I say perform because that is what it felt like.  A circus or rock band performance with the travel from city to city and getting in 4 matches in an hr and a half time frame.  The best part was I think we added some new fans to the AVP.  A lot of kids that hadn’t ever seen pro beach volleyball live got to come and buy up all the AVP apparel and watch some good volleyball.

It was fun playing against Rosie.  I sometimes take how good he is for granted,  playing along side him for these last two years.  When he hits smart he is unstoppable.  He was slice cutting some insane shots that I couldn’t get even when blocking angle.  Then he went deep middle over the top of my block and made me feel very little.

Furby and I had some great matches against Rosie and Casey.  We had been talking trash for the last year about this exact match up whenever we hung 0ut.  Casey/Rosie think they should never lose to two big guys like us for some reason.  We had a steak dinner on the series for the week and if anyone swept it than it was dinner at Mastros.  Needless to say Furby and I swept 3-0.  Suck on it! Maaaaaaaaaaastros!!!

Other than that life has been pretty low key.  Just getting excited for the upcoming year!

Jake

Wow my first blog! Not quite sure how I feel about it. This takes me back to my writing 110 at the University of Utah where I never got above a B on any one of my 15 papers turned in that semester. Should be fun. I’m gonna try and keep this blog as real as possible. Details, as Jane tells me, are not my strong point but I’m going to try.

I got an interesting call the end of Nov asking if I wanted to go to a private island called Nygard Cay in the Bahammas. All I heard was that it was supposed to be an insane place and that a bunch of my friends were going (Ty Loomis, Rosie, John Braunstein, Hans Stolfus and Jeff Carlucci). And that we were all paid for by this super wealty designer named Peter Nygard. Ok I’d heard enough I was in. Well it turned out that a few of the guys couldn’t go for different reasons, but Jane, Talita, Ty, Rosie n I were all in so let’s do it.

Nygard Cay (pronounced key) was unbelievable. It’s hard to describe this place to someone that hasn’t been there, but I’ll try. Peter Nygard owns the end finger of the Bahamas. Looks like his own little island but it is connected. When you arrive to his actual home, past the security, it looks like a theme roller coaster ride or log flume ride at Disney Land. No roller coaster obviously but it looks like there should be. Picture the Swiss Family house on steroids and you’ve got a start. Girls greeting you at arrival are dressed in booty shorts with dumps hanging out. Perfect start. Peter has 40 people on staff that are waiting on you hand and foot. Whatever you need, whether it be the 80 smoothies I ordered or the non stop coctails Rosie and Ty had, they brought it to you on a silver platter (literally).

The beach around Nygard Cay has been picked of all shells by his workers so as to create better volleyball sand. He has 3 perfect nets set up side by side. Bahemian ball shaggers are quick to get your ball or else they hear it from staff for being slow. We played a lot of beach volleyball. A little too much, but it was good to get out and play again, since the last time I touched a ball was Brazil in Oct. Co-ed tourney the first day with Jane was great and we got through it without tears so that’s a plus. A couple of Bahemian national team members came and played in the tournaments which was cool. Both had arms like Canyon Ceman but without the control so sitting back on defense with no block during co-ed tourney my wife almost died. Next day was King of the Beach and I lost with my partner Tony Epy in the final to Mike Dipierro and Dave (ex FIVB Canadian star). Tony sided out like a stud but we lost 17-15 in the third. Next was a pro-am where Rosie and I both played with Nygard individually as the #1 and #2 seeds of the tournament. That’s right Nygard played on both teams in a 16 team bracket tourney. He is 59 years young playing twice the volleyball I played, I was exhausted and he just kept wanting more. He must have averaged about 8 matches a day and could’ve played more. He has a love for the game of beach volleyball that is unrivaled. Then the final day Rosie and I played a normal tournament and beat a cramping Mike Morrison and Mike Dipierro in the final.

During the trip we also went jet skiing, snorkeling and horse back riding. Nygard also took us to Nobu and some club at Atlantis where we made the most grandiose entrance into a club I’ve ever been a part of. 3 cameras (DIG, Travel Channel, and Nygard Pub) on the whole entourage as we entered the club to our VIP booth. Nygaard enters first with his 6 dead hot girlfriends and the rest of us in tail. The whole thing was a little much, but it was worth it just to watch Ty Loomis. Let’s just say he excels in this arena. Ty you’re a superstar.

All in all it a was a trip unlike any other I’ve been on. Unbelievable food. Great friends. Beautiful beach. Thank you Peter Nygard!

Jake