Notes on the tournament

I will have more pics to come later of the tournament. We had a great time. We stayed at the Laguna Beach Resort in Panama City. It was amazing. We had room for 22 people, so there was lots of space. It was located right on the beach and we had a living room, dining room, kitchen, 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. We got there and immediately went out to the beach while Mrs. Mary a.k.a. team mommy went shopping for us and made dinner. We relaxed, played some beach volleyball, took pictures and just enjoyed the beautiful sunset! Then we went in and had a wonderful dinner and Rachel and I went to the store to get some things for our team "game". When we got back it was getting dark and so Rachel took the girls into one of the rooms and divided them up into teams and explained the game, while I briefed Mrs. Mary of her part in our little prank. The girls each received a bucket and a flashlight and were instructed to go a certain direction on the beach and collect as many little crabs as they could. We had them bring them to the center of the beach area and put them in the big hole you see Becky in on the previous post. The team that collected the most crabs won part A of the game. One team ended up with 21 and the other team only had 3. Then the girls had to stand around the outside of the hole while the crabs started crawling out. If they moved they were out. I am not sure which team won this part of the game because it was mass chaos when the crabs started crawling out of the hole! While we were playing our game, Mrs. Mary was up in the house collecting one item from each girls uniform and hiding it. After the crab game we played some more beach volleyball and then jumped in the heated pool! We went back up to the house at about 11pm and had a wonderful team devotion and time of prayer! Then it was off to bed! The next morning Rachel and I were quiet and trying hard to keep a straight face as the girls came in one by one deeply apologetic for the missing items. I think Kelsey was first. She came in and said " I am so..... sorry coach but I think I forgot my spandex. I remember packing them, but they must have fallen out of my bag or something because I have looked everywhere for them!" I resisted the urge to burst out laughing and gave her a stern look and said, "Okay, then lets see what we can do." We found her a pair of regular black shorts and said , "well this will just have to do. " Then Kathy came in and couldn't find her spandex either. She said, "I know I had them." She was really upset. The best Was when Radiance came in and couldn't find her jersey. She didn't even want to tell me. She just gave me this really sad look and I said, "what!" She said, " I don't want to tell you. " Finally I got it out of her. I yelled for the girls to come to the living room and said, "This is ridiculous!, who else is missing part of their uniform." The girls looked terrified as a few of them spoke up that they were missing kneepads, shoes, jerseys, spandex, etc...! I said, "that is it we are just going home, there is no point playing if we can't even remember to bring our uniforms. " Then I turned to Mrs. Mary and said what do you think we should do? She said, "well being the team mom I usually try to prepare for these types of things and I just happen to have some things that might help." She pulled out a bag with all of the girls uniforms in it and passed them out. The girls looked confused and shocked! It took them a few minutes to realize that we had pranked them. When they finally realized what had happened everyone started laughing and joking. We left for the tournament and were ready to play and have a great time.
The tournament was a 16/17 tournament and there we were matched up against a really good seventeen team right off the bat. We played really well. We lost the first game 25-21 and then we gave them a run for their money in the second game and the final score was 30-28. Our second game was against another 17 team and we had it won. We lost the first game 25-23, we won the second game 25-17, and lost the third game 15-13. It was so draining. Then we played our final match against a really good 16 team. They beat us 25-19 and 25-15. We didn't play too well in this match and it was really disappointing to end on that note. But other than that we had a great tournament!