Updates from Darth-Setter 4/6/98

Well, another weekend has passed and another trek cross state has produced familiar results. The Darkside arrived by Blue Glider (Rick, Zaz, Kurt, Raik, Shawn), by Mustang (Shane from Orlando) and by Slothmobile (Wade in his rental beast after flying in from Central America). Fielding our six with Shawn as insurance, we came to the Eckerd Tournament expecting to battle the west coast's best, but were slightly disappointed to find that at least three teams had pulled out between Tuesday and the weekend. Their loss. We found a 4 team tournament with one of the teams being the Eckerd 2nd team. Best of three match play to 15 points for pool seeding proved "interesting" as we took our time waking up for our first match.

We did prevail easily after a slow start against Roofwear 2-0, and then beat Your Name Here VBC 2-0 with one of the games going 15-13. They were easily the next best team in the tournament. The final match of pool play was against Eckerd, which gave us the opportunity to have Raik set his third match of the year and gave Shawn two full games on the court. It was a 2-0 victory with the second game going 15-1 (ouch!). This gave us first place in pool and a bye into the finals.

In the semi finals Your Name Here VBC beat Roofwear without any real problem 2-0 and met us in the final, best of 3 to 15, third game rally scoring. In somewhat classic Darkisde fashion, we saved all of our ugliness for this game, while YNHVBC played out of their butts. We blew a 10-4 lead to trail 12-10 and loose 15-13; our first loss of the day. We played better in game two and amazingly discovered how to serve in, block and hit in. Oh, and by the way - win. Which all brought us to the third rally scoring game. We lost the toss and they elected to receive. We suddenly remembered that we can block and shut them down, switching sides 8-1 and pounding them ugly 15-5 or 6. Nice win. $50 of our $80 entry fee back and done by 5:40pm. We will come to your stinking coast and beat your teams and take your money! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

"The Dorkside". There were several candidates in the running for this one. Shawn's tremendous hit into a stuff that will probably make some Eckerd kid's career highlights was one. "Lobsterboy" Taylor's - not one, but two open tandem out balls, and a third that fortunately hit someone. But our winner is the Slothy one himself, Wade I-can-crush-this-overbump-ball Galt. The high overbump is coming over the middle of the court, no one else is near the ball as Wade gathers himself and sloths off the ground to crush the ball into the opponents floor. He does this relatively easy feat, but adds his signature to the play by testing the net tension with his sloth-paw. The whole Darkside team, as well as the opposing team is very surprised that Wade has chosen this moment to test the net, but then Wade has a history of being able to surprise people. After the net springs back to its original alignment the Dork signals come out. But, as Wade put it after the tournament was over, "If this is what The Dorkside is given for nowadays, we must be getting better." I agreed.

It was good to see Shane on the court again; a safe bet to say he is the true offside and back row attacker along with the Slothy one. Greg should really slide over to the strong side and be the third offside if needed. Rick proclaimed that his passing this tournament was "As Good As It Gets" (no Oscar references here!). He did miss an easy dig and then shanked game point into the bench right afterwards, but hey, there's ALWAYS room for improvement.

TKA - No big whoops here. Kurt had one, Shane had a few. I'm going with Shane. Next tournament is in Melbourne on April 18 with Regionals in Orlando April 25. The Melbourne tourney may not be the strongest, but we all agree we play better if don't have a long gap between tournaments. With Regionals the weekend after, we are looking at Melbourne as a tune up. We need to confirm who's going to both tournaments. Regionals is a $100.00 entry, Melbourne should be around $75.00.

Raik has proclaimed that he has Email on the home computer. Once I get it we will all be linked. Oh happy day!