PULA, Croatia — In the end, the Americans swept the Americans in the U23 Division and a team from Italy beat an American squad in 18U.
But the volleyball is just a small part of the Global Challenge, a unique girls tournament that is played in an environment like no other in this town in western Croatia on the brilliantly blue Adriatic Sea.
“It’s something that can bring so many people together,” said UT Arlington’s Brianna Ford.
The teams — and that’s everyone involved, from coaches, players, parents, and Bring It Promotions staff — stay at the Hotel Pula. From there, everyone walked a short distance to the Dom Sportova competition arena for matches. Back at the hotel, there was pool time and during the off hours, girls from 11 countries could go cliff jumping, sightseeing and more.
“I like it because it’s a teaching tournament,” said Mick Haley, the former Texas, USC and USA Olympic coach. “I get to come and teach. It’s not about winning. Certainly we try to do everything right and come out winning if we do it right, but the kids get to learn how international volleyball is coached and how to play with this (Mikasa) ball, and how to play with six substitutions and all of those kinds of things.
“And you don’t just go sit in your room and wait for the competition. You’re out at the beach, you’re downtown, you’re making new friends, you’re down at the pool. We actually have fun and play a high level of competition.”
And his team won.
“I always like that,” Haley admitted.
A year ago, he coached a team into the final but lost to an Israeli team coached by former Stanford and USA great Logan Tom. This year, Tom and the Israelis had other international tournament obligations. For that matter, it’s not the plan of Bring It Promotions to have USA teams dominate. There were teams from the U.S., Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Netherlands, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Bosnia and England.
“We’re really happy the way things turned out,” said Bring It’s Tim Kelly after the 17th Global Challenge. “We’re really looking forward to getting some foreign teams back in the final next year.”
Nonetheless, in Friday’s U23 final, featuring all American current or former college players, it was Haley’s Team BIP overpowering BIP East Coast, coached by Oregon State assistant Arica Nassar.
She’s been in Europe for most of the past five weeks, because…
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