Long Beach was a strange tourney. With all the uncertainty surrounding the AVP it had a very rough air around the whole tourney. Would the players have a place to play? Would the AVP survive? Would we get paid for Long Beach? Essentially, what is going to happen? For players like Phil and I and most of the other top teams we can rely on the fact that the FIVB is not going anywhere. It is not our first choice due to all the travel and being away from family, friends and the comforts of home. However, they pay well, they pay on time and they have a lot of money. They are one of the richest sports organizations in the world and that is a comforting thought if you are a beach volleyball player looking for a place to play. That being said, only a handful are allowed to play so if you are not well positioned or willing to take a serious financial risk, you are looking at other job options.
The tournament itself was smooth. Only 16 teams for this event. We played well pretty much the whole tourney. Played Brazao/Dykstra in the first round and won in 2 games. 1st game beat them badly and then the second game was close. Then played Prosser/Mayer, a rematch from the finals in Hermosa. They were actually up 16-14 serving in both games but we went on a couple of scoring runs at that point and won 16 and 18. Our third match we played Watchfogel and Strickland. Beat them in 2 games. Can't remember the scores though. Think they were in the high teens.
Sunday we played Jake and Rosy. Phil made some sick digs and we had some great rallies in the match. We won a tight first one and then the second one we won going away. In the finals we played Sean and John for the 4th time this year. Game 1 we came out a bit sluggish but they were really mixing things up. Serving me short to the pin, John blocking instead of Sean and just basically really mixing their schemes up. It worked as they won 21-17. In the second game we steadied out and pulled ahead by a couple of points mid-game and maintained that throughout. In the third game it was tied at 5-5 when we went on a 9 point run. A sideout, couple of errors, digs and blocks and it was 14-5. End score was 15-6. Great to win but really overshadowed with all the hoopla surrounding the AVP. Hopefully this won't be my last AVP tournament post ever.
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Todd and Blog Crue: Geeter's Twitter feed says that there will be an announcement about the fate of the AVP today. Lets all think positive and hope that some deep pockets have come forward to keep the tournaments going for many years to come.
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