First Outdoor Volleyball Tourney

Dan's volleyball skills have improved a ton since we moved to the bay area (playing two days a week at work with a former pro-beach volleyball player helps) and we both have been getting better at playing outdoor volleyball so we decided that it was time to enter our first outdoor tournament. We entered a "Reverse Hybrid Random Draw Co-ed Doubles & Quads Tournament" ... a mouthful which means that you play on a women's net so the women can hit from the front row and the men hit from behind the ten-foot line. In the morning they randomly match up the doubles teams to form teams of four and you play four different games with four different partners which seeds the teams for the afternoon single-elimination tournament.

We did OK in the morning and finished at #8 out of the 18 teams in the tournament. However, in the afternoon, we ended up surprising everyone (and ourselves) by making it all the way to the semi-finals. We probably could have made it to the finals, but I think we psyched ourselves out a bit against the last team we played who were both really big hitters so we lost 21-25. All in all, we thought that this was a very successful first outdoor tournament. Plus, I thought it was a blast that I got to finally hit on a women's net for the first time since moving to California.