This morning I woke up at 7:30 (Central Time!) to go do something that I've always wanted to do...play serious beach volleyball. I had played a few games at Matt's recently, but this was an Advertising Young Professionals Tournament.
There was 13 teams in four pools. Pool play would determine seeding in the bracket, every team would get to play at minimum 3 opponents.
However, we were in the pool with 4 teams, so we were to play 3 opponents in pool play (three games to 21 vs every opponent).
Also, you were permitted to play 4-6 players at a time, but max 3 guys. We only had one girl, so we played 4 the entire time, usually against 6 or 5. (Here's the secret: the girls that were playing, we'ren't very good. I think we had an advantage that we only had one girl. When I'm serving, if I could, I aimed for a hole between two girls.
First Opponent - Pool Play
We won our first two games, coming back from 16-20 and 17-20 respectively. We then lost our third game against them.
Second Opponent - Pool Play
The opposite happened. We lost the first two, but picked up the third.
Third Opponent - Pool Play
We were 3-3 and they were 4-2. But I knew that if we won 2 of 3, we would both be 5-5 but hold the tiebreaker, meaning we would be at worst the 2nd seed from our pool of 4. (The top seed gets a bye into the quarterfinals.)
We won the first game, but lost the second. That puts at 4-4, and the next game would determine if we had a winning record and our seeding. I started the game serving, and proceeded to rattle off 11 straight points. It got closer, but we were able to hang on, get to 5-4, and get that #2 seed.
Playoffs - First Round
We didn't get a bye, but we got the next best thing: an opponent that was 0-6 in pool play. Surprisingly, we didn't blow them out. They actually had some good guys on their team. Their downfall was their girls that couldn't serve the ball over the net or do anything besides get in the way. Of course, they played all 6. They would have been better off playing just four, and putting their two worst girls on the sidelines. We won the first two games and that was it (best of 3 in playoffs).
Playoffs - Quarterfinals
Now we were set to play the 1-seed from another pool. They had a bye, and only had to play two opponents. At this point we had played 11 games, them 6. Also, I was exhausted. I really wanted to quit and just go home. But I didn't.
Here's what ticked me off. They saw that we only had 4 players, so they decided to just play 4 as well. 3 guys, 1 girl, even though they had 3 girls there. And they were saying to each other, "We'll just play 4. We'll be fine." As if they knew they were going to win. Fuck you guys.
They won their first game, but it wasn't a runaway. I knew we could hang close. The second game was going our way. We got up to 16-10, and then I rotated the sidelines. I never got to play again. We lost 17-21.
Here's the thing. All day we had a rotation of 6, with 2 guys. For the quarterfinals, someone's friend showed up and we put him in the rotation. He sucked. He blew at least 10 points in the quarters. But it's not just that he sucks, it's that he was rusty. He said he hadn't played volleyball in years. So why are we putting him in now? We've played 11 games together, we know what we're doing. We got our rust off in pool play. We know who's ball is who's when it's in the middle. Now we put in Sucky McRedshirt. Thanks for showing up.
To sum up, this was a super fun day. I was exhausted by the end of it, and the worst part during it was how hot the sand got. It was burning all our feet, but there's nothing you could do, except bring socks I guess.
The very first game, I was playing poorly. Lots of mishits, a few stumbles. But after that, I was one of our better players, rarely hitting the ball out or into the net. In the last game, against the best team, I hit a couple great cut shots, was solid.
We finished with a 7-6 record. 5-4 in pool play. 2-2 in the tournament. It was pretty amazing to be there, with the sand and the lake and the skyline. In the picture above, we were playing in the little alcove above and to the left of the faux ocean liner in the bottom right quadrant.
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