$1,000,000 Tourney

The AVP regular season is now over and it ended well for Phil and I. Just as the first AVP tourney started with Phil and I vs. Sean and Nick in Miami, so the last one ended. Fitting book ends for the season.

Manhattan Beach was a 32 team double elimination tourney. One of the few we have had this year. Phil and I for the most part struggled through with flashes of really good play and some not so good play. With the amount of money on the line, teams were really playing with a lot of heart and grit and were taking the losses hard and were stoked on the wins. One good finish and some guys could double their earnings for the year.

Some of the "winners" for the big pay day were Wong/Olson, Fred/Ring, and Prosser/Stolfus. All 3 teams got their biggest payday of the year and finished well ahead of their seed. Obviously you could make the case that Phil and I, Sean and Nick and Casey and Matt all did nicely too. We did, but over the course of the year all 3 of those teams have been pretty consistantly "there." I also thought it was a consistant finish for Dax and Billy but certainly a nice payday for Dax in his last AVP tourney.

Two teams that did much worse than expected were Rosy/Gibb and Loiola/Brazao who finished 9th and 17th respectively.

For Phil and I the first day was a good day to get back in the deep sand. Our first match was against Heagy/Leeseberg. The first game we took it to them from the beginning. The second was closer but we steadily pulled ahead winning 21-11 and 21-15. In our second match on Friday we played Morrison/Tramblie. They played really well. Ty really mixed up his shots and hits well and kept Phil and I off balance. He had some tremendous hits from about 8 feet off the net that surprised us. I didn't think he could bang it that hard from that far off the net. We ended up winning that match 21-16 and 21-16.

On Saturday we played Dax and Billy in our first match. We came out smoking hot in the first game and were up like 11-3 to start the match. It was ugly as everything was going our way. They steadied out from there to the end and we ended up winning 21-12. In the second they played much better. Billy was stuffing my line and Dax was scooping and delivering. They beat us 21-18. In the third it was close to start and then we started to pull away at 9-6 and 12-8. They scored two points in the end but then we closed it out on a long rally, 15-11. We waited all day for our next match vs. Stein and Willy. I think we played our first around 10am and our second at about 5pm. Phil played really well. I was okay at best. We ended up winning 21-15 and 21-14.

On Sunday we played at 12:30 which was nice. I got to watch a little football in the morning. We played the winner of Olson/Wong and Hyden/Keenan. Olson/Wong won in 2 games. We had a battle againsts them and were actually down most of the 1st game. They were playing well and I made some hitting errors that gave them free points. We came back at the very end and pulled out the first game, 23-21. In the second it was a battle. They were up the sideout 17-16 when Wong had to call a medical as his hamstrings were cramping. When we all came out, they were good and we were bad despite Wong's cramping. They won 21-18. In the third Kevin struggled and we went up 4-1 and 8-2. At 10-2 Wong called it a day and retired.

In the finals against Sean and Nick we played a pretty good game. We won 21-16 and 21-16 but I would say that the games were closer than that. It did seem as though we were up most of the time but that they were always right there. They had some good point chances but were unable to convert. If they had, I think the match would have been much tighter. I think both teams were mentally weary. Fired up to try and win $100,000 and a plaque on the pier, but mentally and physically drained after a long season. I have been impressed with Nick and Sean's consistancy. They have been in the top three 11 out of 17 events with really only 2 poorer finishes. Those finishes were a 7th and a 9th. I know they both would have much rather taken a couple of 1st place finishes rather than 6 second place finishes but I still feel they had a tremendous season.