The Setup

This was a RevCo Quads Grass Tournament - meaning two men and two women, on grass. It was hosted on Saturday, June 13th.

Our team, originally, was going to be me, Rubèn, Ria, and Arci. Ria and Arci would be front row, hitting, while Rubèn and I played defense and setter.

Arci dropped out on Thursday, though, leaving us a day to find another woman. Long story short - we didn’t. We got a Free Agent - Yousif, and rolled with it. Thus, our new rotation had me setting in front right, Ria hitting, Rubèn (left-handed) back right, and Yousif back left.

This was nowhere near ideal. Rubèn was a setter, whereas I haven’t set in a tournament in years. More importantly, we only had one woman on our team. This meant blocking was effectively impossible for us, but stupidly easy for the other team. Having no block made defense much more difficult for us. Their defense only got better, as the had to mark one target instead of two.

I digress, our team rotation was established, and we hit the tournament running.

Pool Play

We were told that we’d be playing rounds one, four, and five - with each round being one set to twenty-five points. At the start of round one we were still figuring out our rotation. We had Rubèn setting instead of me, and I was playing defense. To put it bluntly, we got destroyed. The score ended 15-25 and the other team ended up placing second in Gold bracket. Let’s not linger on this one - there were problems all around.

After over an hour of waiting (yes, an hour) we were back on! This game went much better for us. It ended 17-25 BUT we actually played well. In the first game our points came from their mistakes, not our wins. This game we actually deserved our points. I was setting this entire time, mostly feeding Ria. I set Yousif a few times, and he boomed them out of the court. Ergo why I stopped setting him. Anyway, this game was actually fun, I felt like we could’ve won.

Time for the third game! This game was great and we finally found our rhythm. And it was our first win, too! We won 25-15, opposite of our first game. Our opponents this time weren’t great - they relied one one woman to hit, just like us. This made defense easy to predict and targeting easier. Ria and Rubèn killed it this game, getting so many kills.

Bracket Play

Going 1-2 in Pool Play led us in to … Silver Bracket! We would’ve died in Gold anyway (cope). Silver was going to be two games - a semifinals and a finals. Semifinals took another hour, at least, to start since we had to set up another net. These games were going to be best of three sets - with the first two going to twenty-one and the tiebreaker going to fifteen.

Our first game was great. We stayed in our rhythm, and killed them. Honestly the worst part at this point was the sun - we were past noon so the sun was in full blast above us. Anytime a ball went too high, I just couldn’t see it and had to guess on the set. None of them were terrible, but there were some pretty bad ones. Luckily I had bought new sunglasses the day before (I <3 REI) so I could deal with the sun. Ria was getting a little annoyed at my by this point - but what am I to do. I can’t get better at grass setting mid tournament. In spite of that, we went 2-0 this game, easily winning. This sent us to the finals where, can you guess it, we had to wait again!

On to the finals! Since we had to wait so long, it was just our two teams and Chris, the host, remaining. This made for a little awkward atmosphere because it was so quiet at times, whereas before we had music and other people talking and laughing. The first set was easy. We dominated them and won easily. Ria was on top of her game, my sets were great, and the passes were all high and nice.

The second set saw a shift in our energy. Ria and Yousif were getting annoyed at the sets and the heat and life, I guess, so they started complaining a lot more. This led to us bleeding a lot of points from their bickering. It was a close set, too close for me. We ended 22-20, winning against them in a deuce.

I was so excited when we won! The games were great, I had so much fun, and we got money! After paying for our entry fee, we each got $10 - well worth the nine hours I had spent for it. I would do it again in a heartbeat, ideally with two women next time.

When I got home I realized my variety of injuries - two sprained big toes, two sunburnt shoulders, and a lot of skin on my shoulder had been dug out when I dove at the end.

Memories :)