(26/11/2001)
Malory win the inaugural Balls to the Music Volleyball tournament Some of the top names in English volleyball made their way to Guildford Spectrum last Saturday for the first ever Princes Trust Balls to the Music event. In between the volleyball matches up & coming bands performed on a stage next to the court, recorded interviews with amongst others Roger Black, David Hemery & a video explaining the work of the Princes Trust were projected onto a giant video screen & in an adjacent room a series of coaching & motivational workshops were held.
The first match set the scene for the rest of the day with a highly competitive match played in a good spirit between Warwick & the England Juniors, making a very welcome visit from their training camp at Heyford. The format of the tournament was timed matches of two 20 minute or first to 25 points sets. Warwick took the first set 25-23 & drew the second set when time ran out at 25-25. Aquila were the other team in Pool A & they secured top spot & a semi-final place with wins over Warwick 25-20, 25-21 & England Juniors 22-21, 25-18. Warwick took second spot & England Juniors went back to Heyford for some more training under coaches James Wright & David Dean.
After a break for one of the bands & a video it was on with more volleyball action featuring Portsmouth, Malory & The Surrey All Stars (mainly made up from the local Guildford NVL teams). The first match was Malory versus Portsmouth, powerful stuff as you would expect from these two teams but the match was over surprisingly quickly, fifteen minutes per set was all it took for Malory to record a 25-21, 25-21 victory.
Portsmouth, with only 6 players available on the day, identified an opportunity to increase their squad for the match against the Surrey All Stars when they spied an athletic looking individual arrive carrying a volleyball under his arm. This person turned out to be a rather confused Josh from Big Brother who thought that he was there to present a prize for the draw, a volleyball signed by all the Big Brother house mates. Anyway, kitted out in the Portsmouth #8 shirt Josh took to the court under the watchful eye of another Big Brother house mate Elizabeth who had been recruited as second referee. Most people, probably including Josh himself, thought that he would play for a few points & then be substituted but he stayed on for the whole set scoring a point on his serve & even "hitting" a winner. This guy has obviously played a bit of volleyball before, he got the match officials vote for Most Valuable Player, but then one of them was probably a bit biased.
For the record Portsmouth won the match 25-22 & 25-18, although ironically the second set was quite close until Portsmouth brought Josh ON from the bench from which point they romped away with the set.
Malory booked themselves a semi-final against Warwick with a comfortable 25-22,25-11 win over Surrey.
Portsmouth rested their new found star in their semi-final against Aquila, it looked as though Aquilla's Danny Wohl was going to win everything in sight, having scooped TWO prizes in the draw (including the Big Brother volleyball) he saw his team secure a place in the final with a 25-21, 23-22 victory.
Malory were well into their stride by now as they set-up an all London final by beating Warwick 25-17, 25-16. One consolation for the midlands side was that Phil Wyles was voted Most Valuable Player of the tournament by team captains & officials.
Malory powered their way through the final with a solid serve receive, only giving up 4 points in the entire match to the Aquila service, so at 8:27pm, nearly 12 hours after it all started Malory scored the winning point of the final.
All that was left was for the teams to be presented with their prizes of shirts from Fat Face, one of the many supporters of the event, all the volunteers & officials to be thanked for their time & efforts, the organisers to announce that they had raised an estimated £2500 for the Princes Trust & invite everyone back for Balls to the Music 2 next year.
John Biddiscombe (reproduced from the EVA web site)