My Super Super Spike Weekend!

Well I had a fun weekend. I had a volleyball tournament called Super Spike. There were 151 co-ed 6's team in it and it was phuckin' HOT! I mean temperature wise too of course. I haven't seen so many 6 packs in my whole life! I was pleasantly surprised. My team which consisted of myself, Ken (whom I am in a league with), Tyler (Ken's son who is also in our league), Susan (who is also in our league), Lorne (whom I have played volleyball with for 5 years now), Sean (who I picked up for the tournament and is a fellow Kenoran) and Todd (who I picked up for the tournament and for the obvious reason, he's 6'5"!). We were AWSEOME! We played 3 round robin games and then we were in playoffs. I hadn't been able to eat or sleep for the two days coming up to the tournament start on friday. So Friday I was up at about 6:30am, which I NEVER do. I went to work early for 8:30 so I could leave early and get to the tourney on time for 6. So I took off at about 3:45 that afternoon and went to get some stuff done and then off to Lorne's to pick him up. I get to his place for about 5 and I realized that I haven't changed into my volleyball clothes yet so I changed at his place and got ready to go. We were just talking and stuff and I told him I have had butterflies all day long, I couldn't eat anything or keep from being antsy all day at work and he's laughing at me like I am a crazy person. I think I was actually. So off we go to the tourney site. We get there at about 5:45ish and we had agreed to meet at the entrance and all go in together, but 2 of my guys (Sean & Todd) weren't there yet and as the captain, I had to go to a meeting. So it's like 6:15 when this meeting is finished and still my team hasn't moved down to our court yet. And we played all 3 of our round robin games on the grass courts. I was a little miffed about that at first. I'll get to that in a bit. Ok so, Sean shows up but still no Todd. I am getting nervous at this point because we play in a few minutes and we haven't warmed up yet. Well here comes Todd - running with his dog toward the fields. I mean he ran all the way from his house a good 7-8 kms away. I'm shaking my head because it was 29 degrees in the shade on friday night. He wasn't even sweating that badly, impressive. So we get down to the field and start warming up and right from the warm up I am feeling good about this team. We looked sharp, everyone had a white tee shirt on as our "uniform" and it looked good. So we start playing our first team and it started off shakey, which is understandable because we haven't really played with Sean, Todd and Lorne as a whole. But it was like 4 or 5 points in and things just started to click. There was chemistry between all of us. We gelled together as a team pretty easily. So we slaughtered our first opponents 58-29. Funny lookin' volleyball score I know, it was a running score match that lasted 24 minutes with a side switch at 12 minutes. So the game moved fast and once you got ahead you just needed to slow things down. Plus the heat was getting pretty intense. We all went up to the beer gardens after to share in the victory and I was going to settle in for a long night of drinking, and everyone wanted to leave. :( I wasn't very happy. I was totally ready to tie one on. Well not true I was going to do it the next night and Lorne was going to drive that night. But he didn't want to stay either. Confusing. There's was plenty for the boys to look at. There was so much T & A there my rapier witt and charm didn't stand a chance. There was just as much eye candy for the girls there too. The best part of the weekend was Todd's dog. I'm in love. That dog is amazing! He's a border collie and he does every trick a border collie can do. And he's so friendly, his name is Riot. Good dog name! Todd was doing the frisbee tricks to get the girly attention but for some reason only guys were interested. It was kinda funny. So we took off at about 8ish I guess after a beer. And Lorne and I finally got a chance to talk about some stuff and I told him that Mike and I were moving back in together and he kind of said "Whatever makes you happy." But then he said something that kind of shocked me, he was actually upset in his own way that Mike thought he and I were messing around. Mostly because Mike has met him and kind of knows him and he thought it was pretty insulting that he thought he would make a play for me when he knew I was attached. And that I should be insulted too. I am too, but I have to stick to my guns to prove Mike wrong on the "guys and girls can't be friends" thing. So I tried to sleep that night and ended up getting maybe 3 hours of sleep. I was up again at 6:30 and couldn't go back to sleep. Plus I had to leave early because I had to get the will call for the tourney form Debbie at like 9AM. Then I decided that the shirt I was wearing wasn't good enough so I went and bought another one that wasn't quite as heavy as the other one. And it did make a huge difference. I get there at about 10:30 and Sue and Sean are already there. So I get Sean to help me carry the cooler down to the grounds. I had made sandwiches and brought fruit and drinks and everything for the team. I'm so nice and it was well appreciated which was cool. Everyone was there all be it a little late for my taste. We played at 11 and Todd and Lorne got there like 10 minutes to. Again with the nerves! Damn men! But Todd brought back Riot so it was hard to stay mad. So on to our next game and we had another solid game by everyone. And we decided to try to make me setter from all front row positions. Interesting to say the least. I haven't played the switch since high school. It made for a bit more work but it made my game that much better. Ken had a stellar game with lots of blocks and kills. Todd had this amazing hit that stunned anyone watching. And Lorne got blocked by a girl! I laughed and laughed, but he made up for it with a few blocks and awesome serving. I had a couple of aces myself and made a guy in the back row look funny. We won like 45-32 or something like that. It was great. I felt so energized afterwards too. Then the next game was at 1:30 so we just sat around and hung out and my dad showed up which was cool. But he didn't stay very long he wanted to get his new PT Cruiser out on the highway. So away back to Kenora he went. So the next game wasn't even that big of a hard time and we dominated throughout. the final score was 60-21. After that game we had a pretty big break before playoffs started. from like 2-4:30. We kind of just split up and went our separate ways. I was just drenched in sweat and wanted to go and change but they only had porta-potties to change in and that just wasn't happening for me. I went back to my apartment to get changed and Mike was there watching TV so I just sat and waited for him to ask how we were doing and eventually he did. I was kind of hoping he would come out and watch but not so much. Whatever. So as I was leaving he was going out too so we headed out together and I mention that it would be nice if when I came home and I could have my parking spot and not have to park in visitor's parking or bug him to come and move his car. As it was I moved his car into my spot this morning for him. He gave me this look like "Do I have to?" and I said well I did pay for it I should get to use it. Well that set him off for some reason. And he got pissed off, I asked what the problem was and I got a cold "Just drop it!" in retort. I was like whatever. And I left for the rest of the games. So back I went and finally got there a little after 4 and Sean just woke up from sleeping in the fields he said. And everyone got back before 4:30 which was nice. They announced that the way playoffs would work would be that all teams that finished off 1st in their pool would to A side and 2nd place to B side and so forth. I didn't really like that, to me playoffs should be about the best teams going all the way to the end. Our game was at 5 and it was finally in the sand. We had all of our games on the grass courts and we were supposed to have at least 1 regular game in the sand which we didn't get. So we were going in cold about how the sand would feel. We moved all our stuff up there and it is about 5-10 degrees hotter in the sand then on the grass. I was burning up. I got so sunburned. So we start warming up and we're starting to get sapped and I can tell. We started off pretty strong Todd put us up 8-1 with some awesome serving. Then we let them get back and take the lead and we just never caught up. Me doing the switch wasn't panning out at all and I was just losing all my momentum. I blame that on me, letting myself get too tired too quickly. So we ended our tournament on a dry note. After such a strong showing in the round robin it was as bit disappointing but I still had fun. Then as we go back to our little area, Sean and Lorne decide they are going to leave without even so much as a conciliatory drink. I was a little put off by that. Sean said he had a social or something to take care of and Lorne went out to dinner with someone. It didn't show much teamship (I don't think that's a real word though). Whatever. So I go to the tent with Todd, Ken & Sue and their significant others. Tyler came in a bit later but his girlfriend is under age so they couldn't go in to the beer gardens. We're all sitting there having a beer and bullshitting. It was cool. We were all smiles in time. I still had some food left so we brought it back to the tent and munched on grapes and bananas and sandwiches. It was cool. Then Todd took off and I took off right after him and Ken helped me bring the cooler back to my car. I couldn't find my car. We walked by it like twice. It was funny. And then I went home, wrote a thank you email to everyone on the team and said how well we did. Sean, Ken and Sue all returned the thank you note which was nice. And Ken said "Next year man just wait until next year." And I agree, next year we will take it all! Watch out A Side we'll be back!
J-BOMB OUT!