San Diego, NCAA Champs, & Houston

Lots to talk about and catch up on. First off the AVP event in San Diego. Quite possibly the worst fan attended tournament of all time. There might have been 100 fans there at any given point in time. If you watched the finals on TV, you know what I mean. I think the players outnumbered the fans. As far as the tourney went for me, we were pretty average. We beat Ty Loomis and Casey Patterson after receiving a first round bye. We played pretty well and they never got their serves going. That was Friday. On Saturday we played Hans and Anthony and gave them a bit of a beat down. Hans seemed a little off that game. Not very crisp in his offensive game and then even went to a float serve which I don't remember the last time he did that. Anthony was hitting the snot out of balls as you would expect. In the night game we played John and Sean and lost in 3 games. The third game they smoked us as I couldn't find the court to save my life. The next morning we played Jake and Sean in the 5th place game and lost in 3 games. They won the first, we won the second and we were up 9-5 in the third when my back went out pretty bad. I dug the next ball but Rosy dug me back and put it away. To their credit, the next serve Jake went down Phil's line and he shanked it to where I barely got it and we free balled it over and they scored. The next ball Jake stuffed Phil to make it 9-8 us. Then I gave up a bunch of points and was generally pathetic to lose 15-12. Back felt good until that hit at 9-5. The drive back home sucked! Do want to say congrats to John Mayer and Jeff Nygaard. Smoopsie is back! They beat Jake and Rosy twice in San Diego and that is no mean feat. So Phil and I took a 5th and it was the first time in about 3 years or so that we didn't make the semis in an AVP tourney. Good to break streaks sometimes.

I want to give a huge congrats to John Speraw and his UCI team. What he has done there is simply amazing and is a credit to how good of a coach he really is. Makes it easier to say that knowing that John is a great guy and deserving of all the accolades he recieves. Good job!

Finally I can catch up and talk about Houston. Had a lot of work on the back after San Diego and have to thank Ernie, Rob and Kalao in a big way. Houston has a lot of potential to be a great event in my opinion. As always, it needs to be well marketed to get the people out there and introduce beach volleyball to the city of Houston. The venue was unreal though. Tennis venue but had 3 pools, a weight room, gymnasium, indoor track, indoor tennis courts and more... Really impressed and I hope we are able to go back there next year. In the matches we played well. We played Placek and Carlucci for like the 29th time this year. They were not great and we took advantage of that beating them fairly easily. We then played Hans and Anthony again and played well to win easily. That was on Friday and Saturday respectively. We were suppossed to play John and Sean Saturday night but rain, lightning and thunder stopped play around 4pm that day. So we got up bright and early and played at 7:30 in the morning. The first game we were good and the second game they were good. In the third we upped it back up and won 15-12. We have had some good battles against those guys. In the semis we played Hans and Anthony again as they battled through the loser bracket beating some higher ranked teams along the way. We won in 2 games although closer than the previous 2 meetings. Congrats on a good finish to both of them. In the finals we played John and Sean again. Played really well and won in 2 games. Those guys are playing really well right now though. Especially Sean. He is really mixing his hitting and shots and it is effective. They serve tough and their block/defense is really really good and savvy. Good tourney for them although I am sure they would rather have won.

Nice to be back in the winners circle and hopefully we can continue that in Huntington Beach.