Beach Volleyball

I went to beach volleyball with fellow Air Force Olmsted Scholar, Brian, his wife Akiko, and parents. He is finishing up his time here in China, having studied in Guangzhou (you know, that small city of 15 million down by Hong Kong). It was fascinating talking with Brian and Akiko about their unique experience of living in China and the prejudices they faced because Akiko is from Tokyo. There is still a lot of hate among the Chinese toward the Japanese...

Talking with Brian, who is moving to his next assignment in Honolulu next month, reminded me that this experience will one day come to an end, so I had better continue to enjoy every day of it! (Although living in Hawaii is hardly a hardship tour)

This was the first match of the evening, the stadium did fill up completely later

Beach volleyball may be the best entertainment value of the entire Olympics. The stadium seats 10,000 spectators, so tickets were pretty plentiful, and there are six one-hour matches to watch.

I thought I knew what to expect of a beach volleyball event, but I had no idea! This is an adrenaline filled, action packed, entertaining event. The music during the event only stops from the time the ball is actually served, until the ball goes is called out. Then the music starts and the spectators start singing and dancing. I got a kick out of watching people from all over the world singing along with pop songs such as Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer" and Men at Work's "I Come From a Land Down Under" for the Aussies. It took me back to the good days of the 80's... something about that music that makes people happy!

I forget who was playing in this picture...Oh yes, it's Brazil!

This "sport" is all about advertising... from the music commercials used in the game to the hats and sunglasses they wear, it's all about pushing their sponsors... and aggressively pushing them.

Later in the men's competition, the American team wore sunglasses with no lenses. Since this was late in the evening, I at first thought the lenses were just clear lenses to reduce glare from the lights or perhaps to help prevent sand getting into their eyes, but no, the sunglasses in fact had no lenses. I was confused! I only found out later that they do this to advertise the brand of their sunglasses during their night games... are you serious?!

The cheerleaders at this event have actually been generating their own headlines in the news.

To quote this video on NBCOlympics.com, "An already party-like atmosphere, cheerleaders use a variety of dances to make sure the beach volleyball fans stay rowdy." http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/player.html?assetid=0815_bvbgirls_ja228&channelcode=sportbv

This was actually hilarious: so the two teams were warming up while the cheerleaders were doing their dances on the sidelines and then... they moved onto the court itself, effectively kicking the players off the court.

You can see the players at the bottom of this picture just looking at the cheerleaders, I think in disbelief, because they totally invaded and took over the court while they were warming up. After watching for a couple of minutes, and realizing the cheerleaders weren't giving up the court, the players left the court.


So while we were completely entertained, we also wondered if this was really worthy of being an Olympic sport. I'm not saying that these athletes aren't world class athletes, but I really felt that you could almost leave from this event after six hours of watching it and think that you had been to a dance contest and not a sporting event.

Regardless, go USA, we need some gold medals to catch up!