Volleyball nationals in Nawlins...

I just got back this afternoon from USAV nationals in New Orleans. As most of you know this is a big indoor volleyball tournament that I've been going to every year for 6 years now. As far as indoor volleyball goes, it's the biggest tournament with the best competition that I get to participate in. I'll do my best to explain what it's like, but it's tough and I know that only Tamara will understand.

Let me start with some random thoughts and then I'll go into the details for those interested;

- I still have a little game left. I was really starting to doubt this.
- On the other hand when it comes to hard core partying, I'm really getting old.
- I had a lot of fun playing volleyball, we played well, and it's an awesome sport.
- I really wanted to play poker in the casino but I never got the chance and that's a bummer.
- Team America is still a great movie ;)
- New Orleans is still in very bad shape and it's pretty sad :(
- I'm sorry if this post is so long, but there's lots to say. Feel free to read it in pieces.

Ok, now on to the MUCH longer version about USAV nationals. In short, it's about 4 days of playing/watching volleyball all day long and partying every night. It's a marathon. For you mstr people getting back from nationals feels a lot like getting back from the cruise (just trade in the tan for sore muscles). I've been playing with the "same" team for 6 years now. I put that in quotes because every year some people leave and new players come, so from the original team only 2 players remain, myself and Paul Courtney a.k.a. PC. At nationals you have teams that take it very seriously and never party while they're still playing, you have teams that don't give a fuck about the vball and just party, and you have the weird beasts like my team that try to play well and party at the same time. Our team name was Spike Force for the longest time, but this year we finally got sick of it and changed it to Team America (fuck yeah!).

To give you a feeling for what Team America is all about, I got in to New Orleans at about 3pm. When I got in to the hotel, the Hilton Riverside, I went straight to PC and E's room (aka Eric, our setter) which as usual would become party central for the next few days. There I was greeted by $200 worth of hard liquor freshly purchased, the 40 Year Old Virgin playing on our makeshift home theater (think laptop, projector, and a blanket over the tv stand as screen), and a deck of cards for a friendly game of asshole. By 5pm we were all drunk, and a couple of us pretty well on our way to flat out hammered. Oh, and did I mention that to our great dismay our first match was the next day at 8am? This was horrible news as the past 5 years we'd had the late schedule and not started playing until the afternoon. Not to mention that one of our middle hitters wasn't flying in till the next day and would miss at least the first 2 matches. The game of asshole broke up around 7ish, and we walked over to the convention center where the games would be held to see some women from our region that were practicing .We decided not to practice this year since we had the early game and that would cut in to our drinking time. This is Team America! To tell you the truth I almost got annoyed by it. When it's 5pm, you're playing asshole in a hotel room, your team captain is on his head in the room corner cuz he decided to wrestle our 6"5 middle you start to wonder if it's gonna be a long weekend. But as it turned out I had a great time...

Wow, this is gonna be a long post. Hmm. Ok, well about the volleyball. Nationals is big. It's played in a convention center. Think a HUGE open space, with about 40 volleyball courts. It's so big it's split into 2 sessions to accomodate all the different levels. It's mens, womens, and coed teams of all different levels. From the 60 and over age group, B players which is the lowest, to the Open level where you can find Olympians playing. We're talking hundreds of teams, thousands of players. I play men's A which is pretty much middle of the pack. The competition is really solid, but any olympians still playing are way past their prime. Every year several teams from the DC area go to compete, and we pretty much all know each other so we try to support each other as much as possible. Think loud obnoxious cheering, and yes they do sell beer at the gym. This year men's A had about 45 teams. The way it works is that they want everybody to play at least 3 days and maybe 4, even if they lose all their matches. They do this by putting everybody into pools of 5-6 teams, and the first 2 days you play everybody in your pool. Then depending on how you did in pool play, they put you into playoff brackets. The playoffs are double elimination, lose twice and your done. There's gold, silver, bronze, and copper brackets. We were in a 6 team pool, so we had 5 pool matches. 3 on Saturday and 2 on Sunday. To keep this somewhat manageable I won't give the play by play of pool play. Let's just say that we had a pretty good draw. Our 2 8am matches were against average teams, and even though we had several hung over or missing players we managed to go 4-1 in the pool and came off first by points.

I will talk about one of our pool matches because it's a good story. Before each match the teams warm up. There's a routine to it. Players loosen up individually in their favorite way, then we'll pepper for a little while (this is a warm up drill where you hit the ball back and forth alternating passing, setting, and hitting at each other), and then the teams will warm up hitting by doing hitting lines. The players get in line (each team on their side), toss the ball at the setter who sets them for a hit. Hitters warm up using different sets (high outside, quick middles, right side, etc...). At this point as a player I'm just trying to warm my body up, my legs and shoulders and I'm trying to get into a rhythm, but I'm also sizing up the other team. My team is notorious for "losing" warmups. That is, we're not very impressive when we warm up. Other teams usually look much better by having huge hits in warm ups. Our third match on Saturday was against such a team. They had a dude who looked like he could be on the cover of some muscle magazine (actually, I hear he's a stripper). Not only did he look strong, but he jumped out of the gym and he was just crushing balls in warm up. They had other big hitters and after each hit they'd be loud. In the meantime I'm barely hitting the ball cuz my shoulder and knees still hurt at this point, and the rest of my team is about the same. When the game started, the first couple of points they had a couple of big hits and they were being loud and cocky. But then we blocked them a few times, dug them a few times, and it was on. We won 25-14, 25-16 which in vball terms is a straight up ass whipping. Felt good to take a cocky team and demolish them.

Sat night I was good and didn't party too hard, which I somewhat regret. It was 11:30pm, I was in the casino, I'd been drinking for 4-5 hours, and people were going out to Bourbon street, but I decided to be good and go home to sleep for our 8am match on Sunday. As it turns out, everybody that went out had a great time, (think drinking, dancing, mechanical bull, and boobie sighting), the team we played at 8 sucked and was more hungover then we were, and it was my turn to sit the next match so I didn't play. I should have gone out!

Anyway, back to the vball. So we came off first, but I wasn't sure if we were good, or if we just had a weak pool. Personally, I had played ok so far, but not great, and I wasn't sure if I still had it. I had serious doubts that I could still be a good hitter at this level. I've never been a dominating hitter (kinda hard at 5"10) but I'd always been a solid, consistent and effective hitter. Rarely hit the ball out, jump high, hit the ball hard and high and either tool the block, get a kill or at least keep the ball in play. Physically I didn't know if I still had it. My shoulder hurts, my knees hurt, my achilles hurts. In the past few years I've also had these pains, but with some painkillers, good warm up, and adrenaline I've been able to feel good on the court. but this year that feeling had been rare.

On Monday, we had our first playoff match and this would determine if we'd make it into the gold playoff bracket or the silver bracket. The game was at 1:50 so we got to sleep in a bit. I had trained fairly hard before nationals, so I wasn't sore from the first 2 days. On advil/aleve as usual, and after a good warm up I felt pretty good. The team we were playing was real tall and athletic and on paper looked better then us. We struggled and got down early, but I felt good. My legs felt good, I felt strong and I was hitting the shit out of the ball against much taller blockers, either going around them, or off their block. But we lost the first set. And then PC sat me the second set (it was my turn), and that was tough. Hard to sit on the bench when you played well. We played better in the second set but still lost. So off to the silver bracket we went. We'd lost one match, so one more loss and our tournament was over. The next team we played was ok, but we were on. I still felt good and we all played well and won the match fairly easily in 2 sets. But unfortunately in the second set Nathan, our best middle, landed on an opposing player's foot and sprained his ankle pretty bad. He was done for the tournament. That was a tough blow. We had to use one of our outside hitters to replace him in the middle and we were down to 7 players, 6 court players and our libero (defensive specialist). There would be no more rest for anybody.

Here's how the silver bracket played out:

http://www.usavolleyball.org/media/adult/06Open/06MASilverBronzeCopper.pdf

On tuesday we had the quarter finals at 9am. We played a solid team with a couple of really strong hitters, but we played well and won in 2. The semi was at 12:40, and this was an epic match. The team we were playing was just solid. They made very few mistakes, had a couple big hitters, some crafty smart ones, and played good D. We had at least 20 fans there for us and they cheered hard for us. The first game was back and forth, back and forth, but we lost 26-28. In the second game we got down 20-15. At this point we could have folded. But we made a run, and came back. And then it was a question of who could impose their will, which team could make a big play. At this point fatigue became a factor. I was still hitting really well but I had to dig deep physically. It was a question of who would blink first. It's hard to put in words what it was like. PC had a camcorder and maybe I'll be able to put some video at some point. We managed to win the second set 29-27, and we took the momentum. In the third game to 15, it started out close but we took a little lead and we finished it off first. I don't remember the last time I played such a hard fought match. I was spent. My hands were shaking I was so tired. And we only had an hour rest before the finals.

The finals was eerily similar. We were playing an older team but with some amazing players that were just past their prime. Smart, consistent, very skilled. You can see the score in the link, but it played out very much like the semis. Lost the first, battled, really battled to win the second. And the third was back and forth. But this time we blinked. We were spent. And they won the third 16-14. So we came in second in silver (2 years in a row) and 10th overall. Good stuff. And it was good to feel the rush and know I still had a little bit left in the tank. Now if only I could still party hard ;)

There's more stories, but this is way too long!