In football, stories of internal quarrels usually begin with dissatisfied substitute players. In volleyball, on the other hand, the competitiveness begins with the first player on the bench waiting for playing time. Because every move ends with the ball touching the ground, a single player with poor form on the day is sufficient as a weak point. The fact that games are won by a strong bench is not just an empty phrase. The first division volleyball players from TSV Haching Munich provided proof of this on Sunday when they deservedly knocked the highly favored VfB Friedrichshafen out of the DVV Cup in the quarter-finals. The most successful attacker of the evening was the 23-year-old Alginon Maurice Lewis-Fregeau and he came off the bench.
Managing director Mihai Paduretu wanted the move to the semi-finals to be recognized as a success for the entire team, “which we needed after a long time with many small steps”. But he also admitted, in addition to special praise for Lewis-Fregeau, “that we didn’t have these options for change in the past.” What was meant was the recent past, since Unterhaching has been playing solo as a first division team again after the merger project with Innsbruck was dissolved. As a German-Austrian cooperation, Haching had maintained a professional ensemble with championship ambitions, which had double members in all positions. In his previous Generali era, during which Haching won the cup four times, things looked similar in the end, but it took a lot of development work. In the fifth year after the new beginning, the Upper Bavarians flashed a reminder of their successful sporting times on Sunday and welcomed defending champions Berlin on December 11th.
He wants to include the unusual position in his repertoire in the long term
The current team not only appears more harmonious than in previous years, it is also stronger individually. One of the five international additions is outside attacker Lewis-Fregeau, who initially found himself on the side of the field quite often on his first international assignment after college and came on as a substitute in the diagonal position against VfB. “It’s sometimes difficult to understand what phases like this bring you while you’re sitting outside – because as an athlete you always want to play,” he says. But he believes that it helped him to “take a step back and focus on the basics of my game again with a little distance.” In the three months since his move, he has “grown as a player” because he has had the opportunity to focus on the details “instead of being responsible for winning games.”
He wants to include the unusual position for him, in which he scored 18 points against VfB, by far the most points on the Hachinger side, into his repertoire in the long term in order to be able to “help where I am needed most”. He is only looking forward to the quick reunion with Friedrichshafen in the league next Saturday. “These clubs have exactly the category of players that I want to compete with on the field,” he says, and then immediately sent a declaration of war to Lake Constance: “I hope they are well prepared – because we will be.”
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