The universe, as any sensible person knows, is governed by the Law of Narrative Inconvenience. This law dictates that if you have a volleyball match to play in The Hague, your squad will immediately begin to dissolve like a digestive biscuit in a hot cuppa.
First, there was Romane, who suffered the noble, albeit structurally unsound, tragedy of eating too much pasta. This was followed by Anouk, who was so morally affronted by the pasta incident that she took an impromptu trip down the stairs, rendering her ankle less of a joint and more of a decorative bruise. We were down to eight.
Then Romy informed us she was viewing the world in 2D—one eye having apparently gone on strike. Fortunately, by midday, her peripheral vision returned from its tea break, and we were back to a sturdy, if slightly bewildered, eight.
The First Set: A Study in Entropy
We were facing Kratos again. Last week, we’d beaten them with the casual ease of a librarian shushing a toddler. This time? Chaos.
Perhaps it was the absence of Romane’s carbohydrate-heavy aura, but the first set was… well, it was a bit of a mess. Lieke was back, fresh from producing our youngest fan (a recruitment strategy we really should look into more often), and she played brilliantly. Alessia, meanwhile, was recovering from a disagreement with a bicycle—a machine that, as we all know, is essentially two circles of spite held together by wires.
Despite our best efforts, we lost the first set. It was unnecessary, like putting a ‘Beware of the Dog’ sign on a goldfish bowl. Kratos hadn’t changed; they were just there.
The Second Set: Logic Reasserts Itself
In the second set, we remembered that the point of volleyball is to hit the ball at the floor, not vaguely near it. Our serves regained their venom, and our attacks became focused. We took it 25-14. It was sensible. It was orderly. Naturally, it couldn’t last.
The Third Set: The Human Carousel
This is where the Kratos coach decided to subvert the very concept of “a team” by treating her bench like a frantic game of Musical Chairs played at 78rpm. Players were spinning on and off the court so fast that Nelleke noted it looked like a carousel. I suspect several Kratos players left the court with mild centrifugal brain damage.
Amidst this madness, I decided to deploy “The Beach Move.” Rather than jumping (gravity is, after all, merely a suggestion), I hit the ball with a horizontal trajectory that followed the net like a polite but firm debt collector. Scoring within the metre! Kratos simply evaporated. 25-10.
The Fourth Set: The Blind Spot
By the fourth set, the dizzying rotation of the Kratos “Carousel” started to affect us. Or perhaps it was the hour. Or perhaps someone—whose name rhymes with nothing because I’m not a snitch—decided we’d already won.
We suddenly developed a collective blind spot for Position One. It was as if that specific patch of floor had vanished into a pocket dimension. Kratos scored. We panicked. Then, remembering we had better things to do than play a fifth set (like sleeping), we began smashing the ball as if it had personally insulted our ancestors.
*Result: 3-1. Victory to Sovicos.
Post-Match Rituals and A Team Outing*
The evening concluded with Alessia facing her first “Bar Task.”
“What does this have to do with volleyball?” she asked, with the innocent logic of the uninitiated.
We looked at her. We looked at the taps. We looked at the cosmic balance of the universe.
“Everything, Alessia,” we explained gently. “Volleyball is merely the delivery of a spherical object into a difficult space. Pulling a pint is exactly the same, except the ball is liquid, the space is a glass, and if you drop this one, the spectators actually have a legitimate reason to cry.”
Having survived the carousel and the bar task, we embarked upon an official Team Outing the very next day. In a display of sheer, unadulterated dedication (or perhaps just a lack of other hobbies), we decided to celebrate our volleyball victory by… playing more volleyball.
Specifically the beach variety, where the floor is intentionally unstable and you spend half the time excavating sand from places sand has no business being. This was followed by a delicious lunch that—crucially—did not involve enough pasta to incapacitate a mid-sized mammal. Since we haven’t lost a single match since the season began, we consider this feast entirely earned by the laws of both womanhood and sport—a winning streak so consistent it’s starting to make the local laws of physics look a bit lazy.
Next Stop: Friday at Sporthall Steenwijklaan, 19:30h, against Volevo. Do bring both eyes. And perhaps go easy on the linguine.
Love, Milene