Reid Priddy

I am back in Huntington Beach enjoying my favorite breakfast (pancakes and eggs made by my lovely wife).  Catching up on my emails as I have received hundreds of emails from all over the globe from people congratulating us on the WL Gold medal.  It is amazing that the match was shown live all over the world except in our own country!  Those supporters here in the US had to huddle around their computers and watch the match on the web streamed by a Polish group.  Thank you Poland for loving volleyball so much!  I understand that your allegiance lies in the Polish national team (as of course it should!) but I am impressed by the amount of support from Polish volleyball lovers!  We are heading to Beijing via “Team Processing” in Sacramento on the 31st.

If you are interested, here is the link of player and coach interviews conducted by the great player of yester-year, Andrea Zorzi http://followmebyazorzi2008.splinder.com/#

 Going back to Cali!  We are in Miami…left Brazil a few hours after the final and are on our last leg in route to LA.  The final was a grueling battle and should be on TV in the next week or so.  Serbia showed they are a team who can win against anybody this week.  Their ball control, crazy defense and crafty attacking is very frustrating to deal with.  But we were able to weather the storm and pull it out in the end.  It is great to win and I think most importantly, we are taking a lot of experience and lessons from this week.  Upon arrival in LA we head straight to an autograph signing party and then have a 3 day turnaround before heading to China.  GO USA!

Watch USA vs Serbia in the Gold Medal match of the 2008 World League.  8:37am PST at www.justin.tv/hqtv3

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 

With some help, we are in the semi’s! We are here in Brazil for the Final Round of the World League. Six remaining teams…5 days of competition.

The trip didn’t start off too well.  We were delayed out of LA on Sunday causing us to miss our connection in Miami which snowballed into a series of unfortunate events that put us in Rio a day late.  I will spare you the long details but we all know the airline industry is in dire straights.  At this point we aren’t far from having to insert coins into the lavatory door to use the bathroom.  But although this particular airline continued to pass the buck onto the next associate and tossed our problem situation like a hot potato we found a ray of light.  I called my brother-in-law who works for Fairmont Hotels and he booked us some rooms at the Fairmont Turnberry resort! Thanks Joe!! It was timely.  Clay Stanley, Ryan Millar, Lloy Ball and myself crammed into a cab at 2 in the morning after a ridiculous (but all to common) day of travel and headed for the Fairmont.

We finally made it to Rio and had less than 24 hours to adjust. Team USA faced Serbia the first match and Poland the second.  We came out very flat against Serbia and they got on a roll.  It seemed like they could do no wrong.  They were kicking balls up on defense and slapping balls backhanded and just seemed to be getting all the brakes.  We didn’t respond as a team and it cost us the match. The good news was that we could come back the next day and still have a shot of advancing with a win against Poland.  We battled and had bouts of greatness and bouts of not-so-greatness. We are still committing too many unforced errors but still it was awesome to pull that match out in a 5 nail-bitter.  “A chip and a chair” as they say…

This morning we woke up and had the morning off.  At this point advancement into the Semi’s was dependent on the outcome of the Serbia/Poland match which wouldn’t be played until 1:20pm in the afternoon. So the coaching staff organized an outing to the Redeemer statue which is one of the famous landmarks of Brazil.  It was beautiful and the view was amazing.  It was a great break and it was nice to get out of the hotel.  We came back and watched the match and fortunate for us, Serbia took care of Poland very easily.

 So we are getting ready to go to bed now, we have to get some rest because in the morning we square off against the World #1 in their home, sold-out arena.  We have a good record against them and are comfortable with our draw.  If you are interested in the outcome of the match, check out fivb.org and click on World League, then LIVE SCORE.  We play at 9am EST on July 26.  GO USA!!!

We find ourselves again in the CDG airport.  Another lay-over and again, nothing really to do here and nothing to eat.  I settled for rice that I had to cut with a knife and a tuna sando…

We took both matches this weekend against Spain and will play them again next weekend in Bloomington, Illinois.  Finland won one of two matches against Bulgaria which gives us a little more distance between Bulgaria in the standings.  A nice step towards qualifying for the Finals in Rio.

I ordered a new, more compact video camera so I hope it will provide more opportunity to deliver media content versus text right here on my blog, Traffic.  We also are playing around with a “helmet-cam” Millar just got for his Archos…might be cool to take it into the action and show you some new angles/perspectives.

Well, the plan is boarding…we missed running with the bulls by a day, maybe next year!  

Buenas Dias!

This week we are in Madrid, Spain to play two matches against the Spanish team on Friday and Sunday nights.  The trip over was a LONG one but arrived last night and are trying to adjust.  Besides practice we are devoting a lot of time to playing cards, guitar hero and watching movies…we broke out a classic last night, North Shore. What a great film!  This is the first time I have been to Spain so I am hoping to get into the center on Saturday.

Here are a few recent articles to check out: USA Today and New York Times.