The tournament last week was an experience. It was a great setup, nicer than the Rumble as far as I was concerned. All sorts of free drinks and snacks, 50 cent beers, and lots of volleyball people. It wasn't run that well as we probably waited 2 hours in the morning till we got going. They also messed up our entry and didn't have us listed as registered. Luckily I brought my proof from the website. We got a nice player pack with tournament t-shirts right from the get go. Then we found out on a 5 team net pool play consists of only 1 game to 11 so you only play 4 games. We thought that kinda sucked but once we started playing we wished the games were to 7. The heat was brutal. My knee felt cranky right from the get go. All the teams on our net were decent. We won the first 3 matches but none of them were easy. I had a couple instances where Rich would give me a great set, I would approach and then not be able to jump cause a twinge in my leg made my leg just kinda go dead for a sec. Anyways we still were feeling pretty good cause we were undefeated and our last game was against the other undefeated team on the net. After only 3 games it felt like we played an entire day. Well we lost that last match 11-0 in not much more than 5 minutes. A combination of luck on their part, several serves that landed right on lines and bad execution on our part made it one of our worst losses ever. The ball we played with was water logged so it weighed 3 or 4 pounds. It felt like a medicine ball, I should have made them switch but I didn't. They would hit the serves as hard as they could and they would drop in cause the ball was so heavy. The last point the ass did a skyball that I shanked. It felt like it was going to break my forearms when it came down. :) Well needless to say we were both grumpy after that. I threw my glasses, Rich was polite enough to wait till we got back to our stuff and fired his glasses into the drink cooler.

We got second of our net but then had to wait another hour and a half to two hours to play playoffs. I thought we got a good draw in our playoff game. It was two older guys that weren't real big but were kind of crafty players. We watched their net during pool play and weren't very impressed. They played on a net where there was all sorts of bad sportsmanship going on. (trash talking, arguing, etc...) We were nice guys and told them that we would just play it straight up and if there were any disputes we could just play it over. They agreed. Then we waited..... they took about 20 minutes to get ready. They had tournament people come over and screw with the net, they warmed up forever while Rich and I just kinda stood around most of the time. Finally they were ready to play. The first 3/4's of the match were typical ball for Rich and I. I felt a little better cause I made more of an effort to warm up. (in our last couple pool play games we just kinda walked on and played) We sided out a lot and eventually were up something along the lines of 8-5, 9-6 (game to 11) These guys were decent shotmakers and the one guy had a tough serve. They had an annoying habit of being the slowest players between points we ever saw. They would walk around, mumble, meditate and God knows what else between every single play. It reminded me of when a batter steps out of the box to annoy a pitcher. Then the game turning event came. We were in the middle of a rally and Rich gave me a nice set. I hit it pretty hard and the one guy had an incredibly bad looking over hand dig that appeared to go one hand, other hand, catch and throw. Rich said "I'm gonna have to say something about that" we both stopped playing and they didn't, hit the ball in and started the verbal assault. "No way baby!" the one guy yelled. "He can F'in catch it if he wants on a hard driven ball" I was in astonishment that Rich actually called hands on someone, he NEVER does that. After more grumbling back and forth we just threw the ball back and actually gave them the point (even though we stopped playing) My mindset at the time was this would only give us more incentive and I thought we would crush them. Well they got a couple good serves on lines and then the last three points of the game went quick. I set Rich 2 tight sets that the little annoying player managed to run up and slap block over to our side. The final point I gave Rich a set farther back that they got and then weakly dinked just over the net. Afterwards were treated to more in your face celebrations by the jerks with them patting themselves on the back for the tremendous come back they just accomplished. We were too stunned and disgusted with these guys to even respond. We extended the olive branch early only for them to snap it, throw it on the ground and piss on it.

Even with all the fireworks we did have a good time, it was a good learning experience. We saw all sorts of interesting people and came up with 10 new nicknames. My 2 favorites are "Ace of Ass" and "Rosey Stovepipe" My knee felt pretty bad all day but the following week it felt pretty normal so I don't know if that is a good or bad thing.