Volleyball and Poker…
They will converge this Saturday, March 10 in a fundraiser for some of my friends’ volleyball team. Buffalo Club won nationals at the US Open Volleyball Championships last year, the first Kansas City team to do so. To raise money for the defending bid, they will be holding a tournament this Saturday.
I’ve talked before about how my best friends are a bunch of guys that I grew up playing volleyball with. Well, today, I’m really excited for them.
They recently participated in the USA Volleyball Open in New Orleans and they won the Mens’ AA championship. Not only that, but my former college roommate (you are the man, Stowell!) – was named MVP of the tournament. Not bad for a bunch of volleyballers from Kansas City. From what I understand another one of my roommates (the winner of the Biggest Loser contest) – was named to the all-tournament team as well. That’s the rumor, but I haven’t yet confirmed that.
My team went to nationals, but I didn’t participate. A small part of me wishes that I would have, but in the end, I had a great Memorial Day weekend with Alli’s parents. Volleyball season didn’t go as I planned this year, which is too bad, but we’ll see what next year brings.
I just want to say congratulations to the Buffalo Club, the team that I helped name back in the day. I’m proud of you guys and really happy for you.
It’s 1:48 AM.
Big night.
Corporate Challenge Volleyball Finals (we won).
American Idol Finale (Michael McDonald II won).
Top Chef Finale (my boy Harold won).
Lost Finale (I got goosebumps…such an awesome show).
It’s time for bed. More on the above later.
“Baby, we’re gonna be up five HUNDIE by midnight!”
Trent, Swingers
Greatest movie about Vegas.
EVER.
OK, so there’s a lot to talk about. First, I want to congratulate myself on making it to 200 posts. This is my official 200th post (according to Wordpress), so I’m going to do a little mental macarena for myself. 200 posts since October 1st of 2004. 200 posts in 529 days; that’s approximately 1 post every 2.645 days. Not too bad…but I’m going to try to get to 400 by the end of the year. Think I can do it?
Friday night, we tried to do some staging at my parents’ old house. It’s been for sale for quite a while now and we (and by we, I mean Alli’s mom…) tried to make it more appealing by putting some furniture in it. It looks A LOT better now.
Played this weekend in the Big G Volleyball tournament, a tournament that was hosted by my alma mater, Graceland University. It was disappointing. First, I was disappointed in the turnout of teams. Originally, they were expecting as many as 16. When we got the schedule last week, it was down to 11. When we showed up on Saturday, there were only 6. While I still had fun playing in the old gym, I was disappointed that more teams didn’t show up. Plus, we played HORRIBLY. I had to pass all day and I did decent for most of it, but then started passing really poorly and the problem was that it was more when it counted that I passed badly. I made up for it as much as I could with some good defense and my hitting was really pretty good for most of the day…I just chose to stop passing at the worst possible time. Plus, with only 6 teams, there was no rest built into the schedule. We were either playing or reffing the whole time. Not fun. By the time the tournament rolled around, we were all pretty beat. So we lost in the quarterfinals to a team we had beat easily in pool play.
Boo.
Best part about it though was that, since we were in Lamoni, we got to partake in the best pizza ever from Hampton’s Pizza Shack. I was able to keep some leftovers for lunch today and man, were they tasty!
Sunday, we got up and went to Bob Evans for some tasty breakfast and then basically slept the rest of the day away. I tried to watch the Big 12 Tournament Finals, but I couldn’t stay awake, only waking up to see that my Jayhawks had pulled it out in impressive fashion. I thought that their win over Texas could get them as high as a 3 seed, but I guess not. We’ll have to settle for a #4 in a pretty tough bracket. This year, I’m not going to let my homer attitude take the best of me and I’ll probably have KU losing to Pittsburgh and I’ll just be happy if they don’t, even if it does break up my bracket a little.
Finished off the weekend by watching Pride & Prejudice last night. It was an interesting flick, but we both couldn’t figure out why Keira Knightley was nominated for Best Actress. Gwyneth Paltrow or Claire Danes would have been much more deserving candidates in my opinion.
So that was it. Long, tiring weekend. Another on the docket for this weekend when we go to St. Louis to visit our friends there. Should be fun. Plus, the tournament starts. Good times.
First volleyball tournament since the ankle incident. Today in Ottawa, we played in a 5-team AA tournament and we ended up second. Again.
We played awful this morning. Awful. We just were not clicking at all and it sucked. We just couldn’t do anything right.
Then, we kind of turned a brief corner and we participated in the longest rally I can remember in my 10+ year volleyball career. We won one and lost won, finally getting ourselves into the win column, needing to win our final two games to make it into the playoffs. We were down 23-24, and managed to come back and win that game and another game to JUST make it in.
Then, in the semis, I got one of the nastiest floor burns on my left leg. It’s probably 4 inches long and 2.5 inches wide and it still is stinging me even today. Well, we won our semifinal match in 3 games and then went to 3 games in the finals against the team that we had needed to beat to get into the tournament. While they ended up beating us, I guess you could say that it was a “moral victory” considering how terribly we played the rest of the day.
Overall, it was a pretty good tournament.
I’m going to test my ankle for the first time since I sprained it. A few of us are going to go to the gym tonight and play a little before our tournament this weekend.
I hope it doesn’t hurt too badly.
UPDATE: Jumping didn’t hurt too much. Landing did. We’ll see how it feels on Thursday if we play again.
My ankle is pretty nasty these days and it sucks because it is keeping me from working out. I’m going to give the bike a shot today and see how I feel. I just iced it at work and now I’m cold, but hopefully it will continue to get better.
It doesn’t feel great today, but most mornings are like this. Fortunately, we are not playing Sunday now so I will have the rehab time I need.
Also, I Just wanted to point out that my brother Jake has a blog (and he’s actually posting on it!). He still needs some design help and has to work out how to use Wordpress, but I just wanted to recommend him as a read.
So this weekend, Alli, Ashley and I went to Iowa. On Friday night, we drove up to Council Bluffs to Alli’s parents’ house and then on Saturday morning, I awoke at the crack of dawn to drive across I-80 and up I-35 to Ames, Iowa, home of the Iowa State Cyclones for a Volleyball tournament.
The tournament went really well. I listened to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on the way to and from Ames (and some during the day) and our team played well, losing in the finals to a bunch of Iowa State alumni.
Unfortunately, on the very last play of the very last game of our very last match, something awful happened…I sprained my ankle something FIERCE. I came down from a block just fine, but the ball was close to me and as I reached out to play it, I stepped akwardly, coming down on the side of my right foot. I felt about 25 ligaments in my ankle pop and then watched as the ball dropped and we lost. It actually still hurts me now thinking about it.
I iced it briefly and then made the 2-1/2 hour trek back to Council Bluffs, listening to Harry Potter the whole way. By the time I got home, my ankle was throbbing pretty bad. Got home around 10-ish and iced again. Tried to go to sleep that night, but it was tough because my ankle was in so much pain. I fell asleep, but woke up around 5 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I got up and listened to the rest of Harry Potter and tried to walk around to get rid of some of the stiffness in my foot. It helped and continued to feel better as the day went on.
We were pretty lazy all day, watching Stealth and some random TV while we waited for the Super Bowl to start. After it was over, we drove home, got in around midnight and got to sleep. By the end of the weekend, I drove approximately 11 hours and over 730 miles. I’m exhausted, but it was a great weekend. Thanks for hosting us, Tom and Carol!
Me and my new team played in our first volleyball tournament (OK, not totally, but it was MY first tournament) of the year this weekend. We got second, which is completely awesome compared to our exploits last year. We struggled a lot last year…with some reshuffling we’ve found a better team and we are kind of just getting used to each other.
It was good to be back in the gym playing competitively. While I’m certainly not at the weight that I want to be at right now, I’m feeling in better shape (although this tournament I feel like crap afterward). I am really looking forward to the year. I think that we will get better as the year goes on and it will be good motivation for me to get in shape.
I have to say, I have this one friend on my team whose name is Josh. Josh is our setter and he is very VERY good. Josh could have played with a better team this year, but he chose to play with me and two other guys from work because he is a really good guy. I enjoy playing with him and I think that he brings the level of play of those around him up. Anyway, I was just thinking tonight how he is a good friend. I know that he could have played with someone else and he didn’t and I’m grateful for that.
I like having a good setter around.
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