Volleyball! by Anna

Some of you may have already heard that I had a volleyball tournament on Saturday. 

Five teams, including two girl's teams and three boy's teams, headed to  Cap Haitian in the cattle truck, along with a small group of spectators. 

The ride there was uneventful, though amusing. 

Many of the spectators were the youngest players, who were not going to play but to watch. 

Many of them were small enough that they could not reach the pole [down the back of the truck], and in order to stay steady they had to hold on to a person who could. 

At one point there was about six little kids holding on to one guy, and whenever the vehicle would stop or start, a sea of little kids and one adult would shift, since the poor man could not hold on to all of them at once.

When we finally arrived at our destination, I was surprised to find that we were leaving the vehicle at the boulevard. 

Soon we were told to take off our bags and get ready for the parade. We lined up six per line, and after some shuffling we got under way. We started at the end of the new bridge, and walked. 

My father says that from where we were we probably walked about 20 blocks in order to reach the gymnasium. 

Once we all arrived we went and watched the other teams playing to see if any of them would be a challenge. We soon decided that we would not have much of a challenge. 

About this time I remembered that I had left my water bottle and sunblock in my bag, both of which were in the tuck. The truck that was still back on the boulevard.

Suffice to say that I got a bit dehydrated and sunburned, even though I tried to stay in the shade as much as possible. Thankfully the truck did arrive right before my first match and I was able to put on some sunblock before having to playing in the sun. 

It soon became obvious that the other team was no match for us, although they did get several points because we miss served. 

The volleyball was far lighter than the ones we are accustomed to using, plus there was a strong wind, forcing us to hold back while we served, in order not to send the ball flying out of bounds. 

The wind caused problems for both the teams because it moved the net. The net was not pulled tight and would move at least 5 inches, and so you had to stay away from it, making it harder to block. 

Even with all of these difficulties we easily won. 

I think that Fauche has such an advantage is because we have a volleyball net which we can play on at any time we want, so we play volleyball for fun almost every day, year round. All of this practice adds up, giving us a huge advantage. Sadly one of our teams did lose breaking our winning streak, but otherwise everybody won. 

This Saturday we will be returning to Cap Haitian to play against Ouanaminthe, another team known for playing well, and whoever wins there will continue on to Port Au Prince for national finals.