John Hawks' Journal from Japan - May 20. 2008
http://www.usavolleyball.org/VolleyballNews/news.asp?id=2175
John Hawks, an assistant coach with the men’s volleyball team at the University of Southern California and also the assistant coach for the 2007 World University Games and U.S. Junior Men’s National teams, is traveling with a group of up-and-coming U.S men’s volleyball players in Japan, where they are helping the Japanese men’s national team prepare for its Olympic qualifying tournament.
Konnichiwa,
Well, we arrived into Narita, Japan after what seemed like a 15 hour flight. It was actually only 10 hours, but with a full flight and Evan Patak complaining about his knees every 10 minutes, you can see how I might have thought the flight was longer. All kidding aside, the flight gave us all a chance to gather around the galley and tell various stories. This is a very close group of boys as most of us were together with the World University Games team in Bangkok last summer… the only “rookie” of the group is newly crowned NCAA Champion, Matt Anderson and he and I spent last summer at the World Championships in Morocco with the Junior National Team. He has really improved his game… much more consistent in every phase of his game and he has developed a lot more range offensively. The rest of the team has also grown since Bangkok… Jayson Jablonsky, Paul Lotman and Matt Anderson are the outside attackers along with Evan Patak and Matt Proper playing opposite. In the middle, we are represented by Andy Hein and Nick Scheftic. Nick joined us in Japan after playing 5 months in Qatar. Andy and Evan joined us after a weeklong trip at the Four Nations tournament in Germany where our US Men’s Team won the tournament. Congratulations to the staff and the team! At setter, we have Jonathan Winder who is an amazing captain. He has earned the respect of every athlete here and leads us through this training experience with the Japanese National Team. Our translator is Nao Ikeda. She is the director of volleyball operations for the University of Minnesota and has been wonderful to have on this trip. Without her, we all would be lost! She taught us some basic Japanese. Here is an example of her work…”You are welcome” = Doh itashi mashite. (Sounds like “Don’t touch my moustache)
Nao met us at the airport and directed us to an awaiting bus where we were told that the Japanese Volleyball Association (JVA) had food for us. As good as the airplane food was… this really appealed to us. It was to be about a 2-hour drive to the Japanese Sports Institute. The training center at the institute is beautiful. It was recently built and has all the amenities a team could ask for. The food is wonderful… it is fun to watch as the boys experience things for the first time. Most notably was Matt Anderson attempting to use chopsticks… I guess they kept Matt pretty sheltered in Happy Valley. Another interesting moment happened this afternoon when Jonathan looked at a smooth round ball in his noodle soup. The ball turned out to be a quail egg but it was funny listening to the guys guess at what this might be. I overheard eyeballs and lizard eggs. The gym was in perfect condition. When we took our shoes off and walked in the staff of the Japanese team was there to greet us and help as we hit the court to loosen up the joints before heading 10 minutes to the Hotel Mets in Akabane to check in. The hotel is great!! We each have our own room or “pod” and we are near each other on the 8th floor. Apparently the boys think very highly of the pillows on the beds and the bidets in the washrooms.
We trained the next morning for about 2 hours with their National Team. It consisted primarily of serve and pass on two courts with the Japanese serving to our serve receive and vice-versa while some got reps on another court with the best jump-serving machine I have ever seen… this thing smokes balls at fierce rate! The machine got the best of us…USA 0…machine 1. The focus has been on us playing scout team and emulating Italy. I have assigned Andy as “Luigi Mastrangelo”, a rangy MB with a great jump serve, Nick as “Victor Bovolenta”, a MB with a good jump float and a more predictable range offensively and Evan as “Alessandro Fei”, who is a big time attacker for Italy with a tendency to hilt hard line. Paul played the role of “Hristo Zlatanov”, a nice attacker with more of a tendency to hit wrist away and Jayson played the role of “Alberto Cisolla” who runs the “go” as fast as he hits the “bic” and also, their best passer. The other boys will play various roles as needed.
After a great meal and a quick nap, we headed back to the training center and got into a scrimmage with our hosts. Japan runs an extremely fast offense so it took a bit of adjusting on our part… we lost the 4 drills for the day but we competed hard and gave them a good run in a couple of them… in the two others, we had a little trouble passing which limited our options. The way the Japanese team plays defense is incredible! It was rare that we hit a ball that went straight to the floor. Evan and Jayson were our outstanding players on night one. They were consistent attacking and really came through at big points for us. As a team, we need to do a better job of blocking the ball against this fast-paced offense and clearly pass the ball; but a nice bright spot was the way we served the ball tonight…high velocity with nice accuracy. What a great opportunity this is for all of us.
We showered at the facility, ate some dinner and sent the guys back to the hotel while Nao and I were invited to join the Head Coach, Mr. Tatsuya Ueta for a great dinner. We started eating sushi and finished at a Korean BBQ. I ate some things that I thought I would never eat…liver, chicken neck, little raw squid, stomach and actually my favorite, octopus. It was all surprisingly good. Meanwhile, the boys walked around and found themselves fascinated with the game Pachinko. We all found ourselves back to the hotel around 9:30 pm.
On the morning of the 20th, we went back to the training center to lift weights in the sports institute. Very nice place! The boys worked very hard as we were there about 2 hours. We are meeting at 3 p.m. to prepare to scrimmage Japan again tonight!
Wish us luck and oyasumi!
John Hawks
2008 U.S. Men’s Training Team for Japan
1 Matt Anderson (OH, 6-10, West Seneca, N.Y., Penn State)
4 Evan Patak (Opp., 6-8, Pleasanton, Calif., UC Santa Barbara)
6 Matt Proper (Opp., 6-7, Meadville, Pa., Penn State)
8 Jayson Jablonsky (OH, 6-5, Yorba Linda, Calif., UC Irvine)
9 Jonathan Winder (S, 6-8, Irvine, Calif., Pepperdine)
12 Andrew Hein (MB, 6-11, Carol Stream, Ill., Pepperdine)
13 Nick Scheftic (MB, 6-11, Santa Barbara, Calif., UCLA)
15 Paul Lotman (OH, 6-7, Lakewood, Calif. , Long Beach State)
Head coach: John Hawks
Thank you very much. 
Monday, April 23rd 2018, 9:26am
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