Editor’s note: Blair Lambert covers international men’s volleyball for VolleyballMag.com, focusing on Americans playing abroad. He will have updates throughout the professional 2022-23 season. This report gets a handle on who’s where.
Got a note about a player or a comment? Email blairlambert2@gmail.com
There was plenty of action across Europe this past week as many men’s professional leagues were continuing their league schedule, and a few more kicked off. We saw the return of Micah Christenson at Zenit Kazan and a number of American players in Poland and France continued early successful runs.
Among the highlights: The three American middles in the Polish PlusLiga — Dave Smith, Taylor Averill, Jeff Jendryk — each played two matches and had zero hitting errors between them, three of the top four teams in France’s Ligue A have American players in the starting lineups and they went undefeated and have a combined overall record of 5-1.
Poland: Smith and Shoji suffered a rare defeat in the PlusLiga with ZAKSA Kędzierzyn-Koźle on Sunday. After defeating LUK Lublin on October 4, ZAKSA fell to Aluron CMC Warta Zawiercie. Smith scored nine points on seven kills and two blocks during the midweek match, hitting .700. Shoji led with 54 percent perfect receptions. Jeff Jendryk scored five points in the middle for Lublin, all on kills, hitting .714. Dustin Watten finished with 50 percent positive and 20 percent perfect passes. Nicolas Szerszen contributed eight kills and a match-high four aces for Lublin.
ZAKSA had a chance to extend the weekend match to the tiebreak but faltered late in the fourth to fall to Zawiercie. Smith finished the week without an attack error, earning seven kills on 11 attempts. He also added three blocks and an ace. Shoji put in a 44 and 28 percent performance in serve receive.
Lublin remained winless after a 3-1 defeat to Jastrzębski Węgiel on Friday. Jendryk, like Smith, went through the entire week without an attack erro. He finished with six kills (.462) and two blocks. Watten passed 44 percent of his receptions positively and 26 percent perfectly. Szerszen led the team with 17 points.
Taylor Averill and Josh Tuaniga picked up Indykpol AZS Olsztyn’s first win of the season on Saturday. The week did not start out promising, as Averill’s 11-point performance was not enough to prevail over…
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