Allan Appel Photo
In a Cedar Hill backyard, “El Gato” grabbed the ball — and the championship was a foregone conclusion in an inaugural volleyball tournament with an Ecuadorian twist.
More than 100 people watched El Gato (pictured) and other experienced players compete in for a regional “Ecuavolley” tournament Saturday.
El Gato was the bolador or “flyer” for his three-man team . He was serving for a “punto” or point, in a fast and high leaping game that differs in some noted respects from the sport most Americans grow up playing.
The Ecuadorian variant of volleyball is one of the national games of that country. Saturday was the first big New Haven tournament . It took place on a private court adjacent to a pale blue house in the Cedar Hill neighborhood on Saturday.
One day organizers hope to play on a public court.
The friendly round-robin event was sponsored by New Haven’s Club Independiente on a concrete Ecuavolley court that Luis Jimenez has fashioned out of his spacious driveway on Cedar Hill Avenue near May Street on eastern edge of East Rock.
Jimenez, who taught and coached a wide range of sports in his native Ecuador, founded the club 12 years ago with his primary coach Yeroby Abad. The club fields men and women’s soccer teams (the other national sport) and competes with clubs from around the state.
However, there is no formal Ecuavolley league in New Haven or Connecticut. Only a handful of private courts such as Jimenez’s and one at the corner of Lombard and Ferry in Fair Haven, on a concrete yard adjacent to the Toral restaurant in Fair Haven.
The game has three players to a side instead of six. Those players include the bolador; the servidor, or the setter; and the strongest player, the colocador, or the hitter. Unlike om classic volleyball, there is no rotation of serve. The net is a little higher than the American version. The official ball is a soccer ball size; you can hold it on the finger tips a tad longer when passing.
Players such as El Gato (he preferred to use only his nom d’Ecuavolley, for “the cat”) and his teammates Patricio Bravo (in the red in above photo) and Wilson Jaramillo travel throughout the tri-state area wherever the Ecuavolley action is.
A graceful and athletic servidor, Jaramillo (in the brown shirt, at right) said that in the summer he’ll play five evenings a week.
At Saturday’s round-robin, players from most of the “Havens” showed up. Some came from as far away as Danbury.
“We’re born with Ecuavolley. It’s the national game,” said Dixon Jimenez, one of the organizers of Club Independiente and an activist in the New Haven Ecuadorean community.
Like purveyors of stickball in the streets of American cities a few generations back, Ecuadoreans play Ecuavolley where they can. It’s a kind of backyard national past time, with players on all levels giving temporary names to their teams as the spirit moves them.
A One-Handed Handicap
At one of the championship games on Saturday, the cat’s team faced a lesser skilled opponent,. Colocador Bravo agreed to play with only one hand.
Repeatedly Jaramillo gave him soft sets. He dropped the ball para la familia, that is, between all three of the scurrying opposing players.
In effect that was a gentle taunt, as if to say: I’m making you all look bad at once.
After an exchange of points, so that the score was 6 to 6, El Gato’s team pulled ahead and stayed that way, winning the first game 12 to 6.
With dozens of waiting players looked patiently on and chicken grilling in the garage, the six players switched sides, only with the same results.
The referee called “mala” several times when El Gato’s serve went out. “Punto,” someone on the sidelines replied, in polite disagreement.
Dixon Jimenez said that if Bravo passed and El Gato wasn’t there, they might say to each other, Donde corres?, or: Where are you running?
But the coordination was fairly perfect. The final score of the second game was more one-sided, 12 to 3. And that was that: Whoever wins two out of three games wins the match.
After Bravo and Jaramillo received the winner’s trophy from Jimenez (right in photo, with Abad far left), they revealed the secret to winning: “Concentration” and finding the small empty spaces to hit the ball.
A reporter noticed how quiet and reserved the crowd was, in no small part because the game was taking place in the heart of a residential area.
“We play by the rules,” said Dixon Jimenez. He was referring not just to the rules of Ecuavolley but to the city’s ordinances.
He referred to events in Danbury in 2005, when anti-immigrant complaints were focused on several areas where Ecuavolley was being played. The charge was that the backyard games were illegal and a nuisance.
One of Club Independiente’s organizers, soccer player Enith Calva, said of New Haven’s Ecuavolley as compared to the game played in Ecuador: “It’s politer here and less loud.”
“Maybe some day we can get out from our shadows and have our own Ecuavolley court, but we need permissions,” said Jimenez.
Saturday’s games began at 10 a.m. and ran through 9 p.m., with activities for little kids, chicken dinner, and much dancing.
On Sunday, many Ecuavolley players and their families returned to the Green to celebrate Ecuador’s 201st independence day, Aug. 10, and their immigrant community’s second annual parade and festival in New Haven.