RIverside

Riverside was the best blacktop/parking lot event I have played in to date. They could have done a couple of other things to make it even better but in all honestly I was impressed. Also, everyone kept telling me how terrible of a place Riverside is. I didn't see it. I stayed at the Mission Inn which is a place I would enjoy staying a weekend at with my wife. Very nice. The area around downtown Riverside that I saw was also nice. They were doing some upgrading of some of the areas but it was good upgrading. Shutting down a street and putting in trees and fountains so people rather than cars can cruise around. I hope we go back there next year and a special thanks to City Councilman Rusty Bailey for being so instrumental in helping get the AVP to Riverside in the first place. You've got my vote Rusty.

The competition was fierce. Our first two games on Friday were pretty uneventful. We beat a qualifier team 11 and 11 in the first round. In the second round we took down Braidy and Billy 12 and 15. Both Phil and I felt we played really well scoring points and siding out.

The next day was a whole different ball of wax. We played the 8th seeded team of Nygaard and Mayer and lost in two 16 and 19. In the first they sided out great and Mayer served really well getting us in passing trouble to create easy opportunities for them. In the second it was neck and neck and we were actually up 19-18. We gave up 3 points and they won 21-19. Tough loss for us especially given some of the folks cheering our loss. Great win for them though and I give them credit.

We had to go through the losers bracket to get back in contention for the title. First we played the #3 seeded team of Furbs and Casey. We beat them 18 and 18. Then we played the 4th seeded team of Nick and Brad. We beat them in two but I don't remember the scores. On Sunday we played the #6 seeded team of Olsen and Wong. We played really well and won in two. In the semis we played the 5th seeded team of Sean Scott and John Hyden. They beat us in the first game 21-16 but we came back and beat them in the second and then 15-12 in the third off of two big serves down the middle by Phil.

In the finals we played the second seeded team of Jake and Rosy. They played really well in the first game and took us down 21-16. In the second game we picked up our game and both teams were playing at a high level. We took the game 21-19 on a Phil stuff block. The third game we were up 6-4 receiving when there was the rally of the match. The ball passed over the net a bunch of times. All but once I think it was within the 10 foot line on both sides. It was like playing a 2X2 short game. I ended up cutting the ball for the point and we went on to win 15-9 for the championships.

Kind of cool to go through the losers bracket and play the #2 through #6 seeds to win. Not that I want to do that with any kind of regularity but it is nice to know we can do it if we need to.