Tripping into $100K

Rarely does it happen that you fail as miserably as Phil and I did in Huntington Beach and still get the pot at the end of the rainbow. God was smiling on us at the end the tournament on Sunday. Thanks to Stein and Mike, Phil and I were able to walk away with an extra $100,000 dollars as well as our 3rd place prize money. Certainly nice to pad the bank account this early in the season.

Huntington was chock full of upsets all over the board. You had the second, fourth, seventh, and ninth seeds all falling to teams in the first round. On top of that, the fourth and ninth seeds ended up taking 25th place finishes. Fortunately Phil and I were able to avoid that bug and win on the first day of competition.

Our first match was against Seth Burnham and Tony Pray, a qualifier team. They played pretty well but Phil and I were steady and were able to keep a comfortable margin throughout the match. Scores were roughly 21-14 and 21-16. Tony had some very good jump serve aces as well as some outstanding digs on hard driven hits.

In our second match we played the always tough team of Brent Doble and Ty Loomis. We played them in Miami and they gave us all we could handle. They did the same again. We won the first game 21-12 but the second game they came out and played very good volleyball. They beat us 21-19 on a missed serve by Phil. I didn't think Phil and I played bad that game, I just felt that Ty and Brent played really well. The third was a seesaw affair until the very end. We took a slight edge and were able to complete the victory with a 15-11 win.

Our quarterfinal match was against team jump serve in Fred and Anthony. Fred struggled to get the ball past Phil and find the court. Phil had double digit blocks and Fred probably hit 6 or so balls out. It was nice for me as they served Phil about 80% of the time. They actually scored a lot of points off of him but not enough to offset the points we scored against them. Final scores were 21-12, 21-17.

In our last game on Saturday we played Phil's old partner Nick Lucena and Billy Strickland. They are a good team but came out poorly in the first game as we took it 21-11. The next game they shored up their game. Nick bombed a couple of aces and had a couple of great digs. We pulled it out in the end though with a sideout to win 21-19.

In the crossover semis we played Sean and Jake and quite frankly played the worst we have played all year long. That is not to take anything away from Sean and Jake who played well. Phil and I were nervous and pressed for the $100K. We were doing things we normally do not do. We got outside of our normal game and instead of being solid and consistant tried to make the great play. We ended up losing 23-21, 17-21, and 15-12. Phil and I spoke about it after the game and he said he hasn't been that nervous before a match in years. I echoed that statement too. We didn't have a killer instinct to go after the game and instead were hoping that Jake and Rosy would give it to us. It was a lesson that could have been very painful in the pocket book if it were not for Mike and Stein's win in the final over Jake and Rosy.

Looking back at that loss it is clear that Phil and I have to improve our mindset when it comes to a game with a lot of pressure on it. This is going to happen in major FIVB events as well as if we do make the Olympics. Playing for a gold medal will be a heck of a lot more nerve racking than playing for $100,000. We have to figure out a way to become calm and focused and enter the "zone" rather than remain frenetic over the course of the game. The only real highlight of that match for us was Phil's siding out. I felt he sided out well. He did not block well and his serving was all over the map. I basically didn't do anything at all. My sideout game was average at best and my defense was utterly terrible. My serving was in the court but not notably tough for the most part. Lots to build on if I want to look at it in a positive light.