At the suggestion of members of the staff at Homag, a beach volleyball tournament with teams from Homag and Schmalz was on Thursday 29.06.2006 on Schmalz's own beach volleyball pitch. The long-expected event started at about 4 PM. After short speeches by Dr. Kurt Schmalz and Wolfgang Schmalz, the two managing directors of J. Schmalz GmbH, personnel manager Martin Helbling explained how the tournament would be held.

A total of six teams, two from Homag and four from Schmalz, took part and provided some exciting matches. The team "Homag 1" comprised employees of the materials management department, while the players in the team "Homag 2" came from the design department. Each of the four Schmalz teams was a mixture of office staff and factory workers. Each team consisted of four players.

In the first round, the teams played against each other in two groups, and this was followed by the semi-finals. Finally, the teams played for the positions in the table: the third teams in each group played for position five, the losers of the semi-finals played for position 3 and the winners of the semi-finals played for the championship.
The final standings were as follows:

1st place: Team "Schmalz 4"
2nd place: Team "Schmalz 2"
3rd place: Team "Homag 1"
4th place: Team "Schmalz 3"
5th place: Team "Schmalz 1"
6th place: Team "Homag 2"

In the intervals between the games, there was plenty to eat and drink: grilled sausages and steaks and large quantities of cold drinks as preparation for the next matches. We would particularly like the thank the secretarys' office, the company trainees and the sandwich-course students at Schmalz, who were responsible for the organisation and success of the tournament and worked hard to achieve this.

The weather was also ideal for the tournament. It only started to rain during the extra game between "Homag 1" and "Homag 2", and we had to transfer the social part of the evening into one of the Schmalz buildings. All players and spectators thoroughly enjoyed the tournament and we plan to hold it again next year.