International volleyball. AKA the best thing ever.
Been a bit lax the last few days, and if I have to guess, I might be for the next few days as well, so as long as I'm here, let's make this post a good one.
There is more international volleyball than I can comfortably introduce in a single post, or for which I can provide adequate coverage. Seriously, look at the freaking calendar. That's a tight schedule. Most of it's pretty minor stuff, and a lot of it is akin to the relay races at big swimming or track and field meets — a minor squad plays through the preliminaries so the star-studded 'A Team' has a berth in the biggest events. Only difference is they're not a day or two later, they're months later.
The men and the women each have a major yearly event. For the men, it's the FIVB World League, and for the women it's the FIVB World Grand Prix. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the two events were someday unified into one, because they're basically the same thing. Sixteen teams meet up, play pool play to narrow themselves to eight, and then play a knockout stage to determine a champion, a runner-up, and a third-place finisher. There's one minor difference, and we'll get to it later (it's the current event). There are also a bevy of youth and club world championships that take place each year.
The world championships in indoor volleyball is only held once every four years. It seems curious at a glance, as most Olympic sports have their world championships either every year without fail, every year but the Olympic year, or every two years, but it's actually in line with other non-aquatic team sports like soccer, basketball, field hockey, and baseball. Qualification lasts up to two years; the next world championships aren't until 2014, and there are qualification events later this year. It's……it's really best not to even ask how qualification works and just enjoy the teams that are there once the tournament starts. The world championships are definitely a big deal; I'm not sure if it's because of or in spite of the fact that they're so spaced-out. Certainly major international volleyball tournaments that a lot of people care about take place every year, so I kind of fail to see why they can't be considered world championships.
In addition to the Olympic Games, other multinational multi-sport events that involve a volleyball event include the Pan American Games, the All-Africa Games, the Mediterranean Games, the Indian Ocean Island Games, the World Military Games (my site's banner is an image from volleyball at the World Military Games), the Summer Universiade, the South American Games, and all order of Asian multisport events. Really, the only notable multinational multi-sport event at which volleyball is not played is the Commonwealth Games. And now we know why Team GB did a fat lot of nothing in volleyball in London.
As I alluded to above, most of the tournaments in international volleyball are in some way interconnected. Take for example the women's Pan-American Cup. This is a fully-fledged tournament in its own right. Qualification is based on NORCECA and CSV (volleyball's sanctioning bodies in, respectively, North and South America) rankings. The winner gets glory and a nice trophy, and that's great, but also the top four teams overall qualify for the Final Four, and six teams (four from NORCECA and two from CSV) qualify for the World Grand Prix. The other continents have similar procedures, with the European Championship affording five berths to the World Grand Prix and the Asian Championship three slots. It's all very cumulative.
It's, ehhhh, a bit simpler on the men's side. The big kahuna is the World League. The top 14 teams from the previous year's tournament get to keep their places automatically, but numbers 15 and 16 have to defend their places (except in 2011, when 15th-placed Japan got an exemption from the FIVB because of the earthquake/tsunami and subsequent nuclear situation requiring them to play all their matches away from home and the 14th place team instead had to requalify). But before that happens, the challengers have to be determined. The Asian Volleyball Championship, again a fully-fledged tournament in its own right, usually determines the AVC's challenger. Likewise the European League determines CEV's challenger. The African challenger is usually just appointed by their sanctioning body CIVB. NORCECA and CSV collectively name one challenger, based on the men's version of the Pan-American Cup. The four challengers are paired based on world rankings to play two-leg matches that determine both which team moves on and who they will face for the right to advance to the World League.
Did I say it was simpler? Maybe I was wrong.
Let's put it in concrete terms. Last year's bottom two World League teams were Japan and Portugal. The four challengers for this year's qualification are Egypt, Iran, Netherlands, and the Dominican Republic. If a challenger is from the same continent as one of the bottom-two teams required to defend its position, that determines the matchup in the next round. If nobody's got a continent-mate in that round of play, it goes back to FIVB World Rankings.
The way the two-leg matches work is basically whoever wins the most sets over the two days wins and advances. Technically, there's a whole tiebreaker procedure like it was pool play in a big tournament, but whoever wins the most sets wins. It really just boils down to that. If the teams split with each side winning 3-0, 3-1, or 3-2, then it goes to points. And god help us if they're still tied after that.
The Netherlands and the Dominican Republic played the first two-leg qualifier late last week, and the Dutch team won reasonably comfortably, (25-22, 25-22, 25-21) the first night and (24-26, 25-21, 24-26, 30-28, 16-14) the second. If you've followed along this far, you've figured out that it was basically all over as soon as the Dutch team won the second set on day two. So you gotta give the Dominicans a little credit for continuing to fight and play with pride and very nearly pull out the win in the second leg. Since the Netherlands and Portugal are both in Europe, that's the matchup for the second round of qualification. Same deal — a two-leg match with whoever wins the most sets going through to qualify for the World League. For what it's worth, the Dominican head coach had some very good words for the Dutch squad, believing they can easily qualify for the World League and perhaps make some noise once there.
The two-leg qualifier between Egypt and Iran is coming up this weekend (and actually, so too is the Netherlands/Portugal qualifier). The winner will face Japan for a spot in the World League. The World League is a seven-week long tournament, and I'll have plenty more to write about it when it rolls around in May next year.
And that's really the story for the rest of this year — qualifying. It's…fascinating, for a geek like me, but it's not exactly pulse-pounding. You can count on me to track all the minutiae 🙂
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