On Saturday I woke up early (and drove into the city!) for a young advertising professional's Beach Volleyball tournament. This was the next event in the series vying for the same trophy that we just won the softball tournament for. Each winning team gets their name, year and sport engraved on the trophy. Could we keep the mojo going?
There were 7 teams going. There would be a series of pool play, and then the top 4 teams would advance to the playoffs. The morning started off reasonably nice, if a bit cool. By the time we got a couple games underway, it started to get even cooler. Then it started sprinkling. Basically most of the time it was cool and cloudy with a bit of rain. Not good weather for beach volleyball.
Anyways, we faced our first opponent in pool play, and won the first game, but dropped the next two.
We pulled it together to win 2 of 3 from our next opponent.
At this point we were 3-3, it was sprinkling pretty good, and I thought about just taking off. We had 7 guys and could only play 3 at a time, so we rotated in and out, so it's not like I needed to be there. But I stuck it out. Because of the weather they shortened the remaining pool play to single games. We won one, and lost one. So now we had a record of 4-4. I thought that might be it for us.
But they said that we had we advanced to the playoffs. I asked who we were playing, and they said it was the team that "was spanking everybody today."
So I surmised based on our record and theirs, that we must be the #4 seed going against the #1 seed. All of a sudden it felt like Lake Placid, 1980: we were Team USA going against the Soviet Union.
Because of the weather and the delays, the playoffs would also be a single game to 25, rally scoring. All day we had been playing 3 guys, 3 girls. But our semifinal opponent was playing 3 guys, 2 girls. We had been told this year, that you couldn't have more guys than girls, and we were told if we only had 2 girls, that we could only play 2 guys. Whatever.
So we followed suit, making it a 5 on 5 match. We started strong, winning a few points. They were not happy about that. They seemed pretty hardcore, and acted like they knew what they were doing. We did not. It was pretty even the whole game. We had the lead 18-14, when the incident occurred.
One of our players went to spike the ball and ended up catching the net with his other hand pulling it down a bit. To that point all day, we hadn't had any calls about touching the net, and there had been instances where people touched the net, but perhaps didn't pull it down like our guy did. He did spike it and it seemed that we had won the point. But their captain, a guy who looked exactly like a young Will Arnett wasn't happy about the net grab.
He insisted it should be their point, our guy explained how it was unintentional and didn't help him. And clearly, 19-14 with our serve is quite different than 15-18 and their serve. Eventually we settled on a re-do, but I know that he wasn't happy about it.
From 18-14, we were able to pull some more good plays together and wouldn't you know, we took down the Soviets. Do you believe in miracles? YES!
From there it was on the Championship game, and it would be quite a poor analogy if our team lost to Finland at this point. We beat them 25-14 and retained possession of the Campagna Cup.
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The thing is, is that we were not the best team for the duration of the tournament. We got some help in the form of the weather, which forced us to only have to beat the Soviets in a single game to 25. It also helped that they were playing 2 girls (who were quite good) which allowed us to only play 2 girls (no one on our team was that great). I think a guy on the opponent's team in the championship game hurt his ankle and wasn't playing. I don't think he was a star, but still. And I think the poor weather also meant that other teams might not have had their full rosters, thought that's just a guess.
The point is that winning is not always as simple as you might think. We got a lot of breaks and played our best volleyball at the end when it counted.
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Through my adolescent team sports career I got participation trophies for our soccer teams and a baseball team. I got a few 2nd place tennis medals/trophies in Peoria tournaments. And of course I got 1st place academic awards, but who cares about those.
No, it wasn't until I got to my 20's and joined the company sports teams that I actually won a championship trophy.
Championships
June 24, 2006: 16" Softball Tournament
June 20, 2009: 16" Softball Tournament
August 1, 2009: Beach Volleyball Tournament
The 09 Softball takes the cake because of the unbelievable, thrilling, come-from-behind victory in extra innings of the championship. It should also be noted, that these were all single-day tournaments, not a playoff championship culminating an entire season of play. But still, 7 teams showed up on Saturday, and 6 walked away without the trophy.
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