Gunnison Beach at Sandy Hook was very crowded last sunday, but not all beach-goers just lay in the sun: we spent most of the day playing with balls, namely volleyball and football (soccer for you Americans :-)) We had lots of fun and are planning to come back there this Saturday, please join! See my previous post for discount ferry tickets from Manhattan.
We worked on some good (and beautiful) serves,
from both sides! It wasn’t often trivial due to changing wind.
Those followed by not less beautiful defense moves,
that sometimes required sand dives,
not always successful though.
A focused two-hand rebound might look less effective but was usually more efficient.
Given the tall height of some of our players and low height of our net, it was sometimes easy to shoot the ball down from just above the net.
There are lots of techniques that we have to learn and practice, and who knows, maybe we’ll be strong enough to participate at the Naked Volleyball Super Bowl? We had success at the “Bouncing Buns” trail race, so maybe we’ll be lucky with bouncing balls too.
After playing a few matches of volleyball, we decided to switch to football. However, we made a smooth transition by first playing (or rather trying to play) footvolley (futêvolei), a pretty new Brazilian sport that combines aspect of volleyball and football. It proved to be very difficult for us, so we moved on to football (soccer). Inspired by the ongoing World Cup, we might stick to it this Saturday, especially if we get more players, although I’m also keen on playing some touch rugby.
Here is a pic of our free kick 🙂
If you want to join the fun, look out for some bouncing balls at a beach near you 🙂