Spikers rock Gay Games Sydney 2002

In an event that many, many of Melbourne Spikers 60 + representatives at the 6th. Gay Games described as life changing and "the best week of my life", we rocked the volleyball comp. and made our mark on the overall event with an amazing show of our presence at the Opening Ceremony.

Spikers teams lived up to the Games mottos of Participation, Inclusion and Personal Best. Taking 9 teams, and with the most striking uniforms of any club at Homebush, our presence at the stadium was visible every moment of every day. I recall playing on the crucial Thursday of the tournament and finding 5 other Spikers team playing or refereeing at the same time! We were all-inclusive - while overseas teams had clearly sent the pick of their nation's gay sports people, by rotating players and even sponsoring the formation of a 3rd. women's Spikers team consisting of Spanish, NSW and ACT players, the fabulous Las Locas, we ensured that players from all parts of the club took part. Finally, our personal best saw the women's team playing, and competing, a whole grade or 2 grades higher than they had registered, and taking 4th. and 5th. place and gaining some outstanding results against AA teams. In the Open C Division, both Set Sisters and TMI made the last 8 with inspired performances - the highlight being the way we peaked at the tournament, driven forward by the electricity and adrenalin generated on the opening night. While the B/BB teams took longer to get going - and faced tricky pool matches with eventual medallists in the 37 degree heat of the first day - they put many victories under their belt after the initial challenges. And lowly Las Locas, of whom so little was expected, found themselves in 4th. place at the end of competition ... and amazing result by a group of women who had only met each other moments before their first game together.

We'd like to share the team experiences of all the Spikers teams. Below Alex from TMI gives you a flavour of the TMI experience at Sydney 2002.

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Team Experiences

TMI

Before November 2nd. this year, if anyone had told me that I'd walk into a stadium filled with 25,000 poofters waiving pom poms (that's 50,000 pom poms) shouting "Melbourne, Melbourne" at me! ... I'd not have believed you. Whoever you are! But that's just what I experienced at the Opening Ceremony - and it was an experience I'll never forget.

This was the March of the Heroes, and over the next 4 days of competition, we not only felt we had deserved the "heroes" tag, but the "elite athletes" one was feeling mighty comfortable too. this from a bunch of guys who barely managed to scrape up a team name, settling on the only acronym they could all agree on - TMI, or Totally Meaningless Initials. but our perception of ourselves is not the only thing that has changed over the week - our team name itself has gone through an express train evolution of it's very own.

Training for 18 months for this event, the announcement 1 week before the event of Belgian and Swedish competition in our pool was greeted with trepidation. Bloody hell - they are travelling 16,000 k to play us ... what must they be like? So we were on a very natural high when we breezed past the lovely folks from Antwerp on our first day and took out the Abba loving Dum Dum Diddle's of Gothenburg - despite their natural advantages: pink satin shorts, Agnetha on their chest and numbers sewn in sequins. These fabulous guys also presented us with a CD they had cut of fave ABBA numbers, and with Bang -a-Boomerang prominent, they clearly actually had more than volleyball on their agenda for the trip.

Well Tell me Innuendo why don't you? Clearly, the Tanned Male Impersonators were on form, and we topped our group with 3 victories, quite possibly due to our strategy of obscuring our identity through a screen of multiple team names. Triumphant. Merciless. Inspired. Each one of our team was playing above himself, and soaking up the attention. And then came Round 2.

It got ugly. Refereeing teams who quibble about start times and the design of shirt numbers reminded us that this maybe the lowest division available, but it was Not a Social Division. and our first loss - to some lovely Austrians - made sure we got the message. We were inspired though, the same afternoon, in my personal favourite victory against the Venice Beach Bums. With team mates itching to head out to North Bondi themselves, our captain, Andrew, reminded everyone the sooner we killed the game, the sooner we'd have "sand in our clacker". The Beach Bums had met their match.

That night, we all headed down to the official Volleyball party at Midnight Shift. Now there were over 1000 volleyballers at the Games, 147 teams in the Open (men's) tournament alone. So why The Shift was surprised when their venue was packed out at the 8pm start time, is a mystery. But the Spikers took over. A little bit of Homebush was to be found in Oxford Street when our "Ooh -Aah ... Spikah!" chant some how got remixed into the house music, and we added glamour to the proceedings when Ferdy showed she plays best in heels and a dress on top of a dance podium.

There was glamour a plenty too at the stadium. Poison Guy Thailand, with Iron Ladies in the team, were the talk of the tournament with their hair pieces and make up and irresistible form. They celebrated each point with classic camp squeals and demolished the field in the A Division. The Melbourne Cup, on the same day but a world away, failed to stop the Queer Nation.

Our victory against the Queens from Queen Adelaide, put Trounced Matches Irrespective (our captain really doesn't have a negative bone in his body, so we are always winners in his eyes!) into the last 8 of competition! The word went out of this place- you better believe it - our team, and fellow Melburnians Set Sisters - were two of the top 8 teams in the world!

We eagerly awaited our draw. Facing the Cabana Boys, a bunch of rather dishy and reputedly talented Californians who hadn't lost a match ... was a challenge. But thanks to relentless socialising by our Spikers, the first player they'd met on our team is 6'6" - they were calling us "the tall team!" And we sure gave them a run for their money.

Unfortunately, we bowed out of competition - gracefully - at this point. There was still lots of action in the stadium and we enjoyed the final hours of the event as spectators knowing we'd played way above ourselves and gelled as a unit like we never had in the 12 months of the lead up. Finally, we had the great satisfaction of knowing that we'd been put out by the Gold Medallist ... there, but for a different throw of the dice, walked TMI.

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