Irvine Tournament

This past weekend I played at Irvine Tournament, a two day volleyball tournament. There were 7 teams on my division (A). On the first day it happens the pool play, when the teams play matches of two 21 points - games. The second day is called double elimination. Teams battle according to the seeding of the previous day, when technically the weaker teams play the stronger ones; Once a team loses it goes to the losers bracket and it cannot lose anymore otherwise it is eliminated from the competition.
We (LA Hollywoody's) started slow, and on the first five minutes of the Tourney, Stephen twisted his ankle after an invasion under from one of the playesrs of the opposite team. He was officially out. Ray, who was playing libero, started playing front row too. Something didn't ork well for us that match. After that we grew in the next matches and ended up with 4 - 4, what put us on third place. I was very happy with that result so far, but you never know what might happen in the second day, when all the players really "bring" their games...
Before continuing, I wanted to say that the best thing of this Irvine Tournament was my team - I got to meet two new players who I really liked on and off the court, with who I would like to keep some friendship and hopefully play with them again real soon. Stu came from Denver and played middle for us. The first time I saw him at the registration I thought he would have an attitude, with his big evil looking blue eyes together with a mohawk, he was definitely very intimidating. As always my first impression was wrong. Stu was the funniest and most fun teamate someone can have. He was always saying hilarious jokes and spining like an ice skater. The other player was Justin Cox, our AA player who came from Sacramento. Some friends had said that Justin was the best player of Nagva in the late 90's. That information intimidated me too. Justin ended up being a sweetheart and very low maintenance. He has obviously gained some weight since his best days of volleyball therefore he would get tired faster than the others. Mike Hubert completed the trio besides me, Ray and Logan. Nedless to say I love Mike. He is such a cheerful and strong player. Mike lives in Venice Beach and plays mostly at the beach, which probably explains his great shape. He is 39 years old but plays like a 20 year-old. I never saw him complaining of pain or muscle soreness even in the second day of competition. That was Hollywoody's. We didn't know much of each other at first, but by the second game we played there was already a lot of intimacy and harmony. We all got along very well.
The second day of competition started and we would play aginst the 6th place seeding, LA Wasabi that happened to be thechampion of the last tournament a ccouple of months before. Wasabi was not as strong as back then though. The kind of team that could be ON and be unbeatable or totally OFF and lose for the weakest team. We were not lucky, Wasabi was ON and everything was working for them. We fought together. The match went to three games. They had the match point 14 - 11. We were able to turn the game to 14 - 14 and the momentum was ours then. Unfortunately, they got back the sideout and closed the game real fast at 16 - 14. That was too much for our team. We fought real hard but the result was too devastating. We could still hang in the tournament if we won the next game in the losers backet. I guess the result of the last match was still in our minds. We didn't play bad, but we didn't step up at any point and so we lost the game 25 - 22 against Golden Hills Rocks, who "wanted" more than we did. The tournament was over for us! In some way, I feel like the result does not make jus to how we played and on other hand I feel a little responsible specially because I know we had a great team and were not able to go further. As a setter, I feel like I didn't get the most from my players.
Oh well, everything ended on CAKE. Tweedybear brought two cakes to celebrate my BIG Three - O, we all hugged and said goodbye. Hopefully I will get to play with them again soon...