The 5/31-6/3/00 USAV AA National Championships Tournament Recap.A slapped together Darkside team found itself going to Nationals. True, it was in the plans at the beginning of the season, but the squad that made it to Columbus, OH was not what we anticipated would be the roster when the season began. Raik, having told Mike Zarate that he would play with his team in the "A" level tournament directly preceding the "AA" tournament, became ineligible. We had picked up Thad Johnson to play middle, and Bryan Stone from Shag Me Baby to hit outside and be one of the passers. As Bryan arrived in Columbus, his wife's father passed away and he has to fly back. I went in search of a legal player I could add and it turned out to be 6'7" Steve Bishop from Ramshackle, who was there anyway coaching his Lake Sumter College girls team. Not exactly a well practiced squad, but the potential was there.
We got together and stayed at Gregg's parents' house, a mere 20 minutes from the playing site. We got the use of their 4Runner and the rental Neon we got. We were in a 7 team pool and day 1 had us playing 4 matches, while on day 2 we played only 2. We started slow, dropping our 1st match 2-0 against a bunch of Ohio State alums, the 2nd game being 25-21. The day was like a bad dream; we lost all the rest of our matches. In two we lost in the 3rd game, after losing the 1st and winning the 2nd, cruising with momentum. We lost a very close one to eventual AA champion Pace Bootlegger in 3 games, the 3rd one being 11-15. Day 2 we dropped both our matches, leaving us and unblemished 0-6 in pool play and the last seed in the double elimination tournament.
Day 3, we played the 1st match against "Set Me" from Massachusetts and lost the 1st game 27-29. Wondering if our whole tournament was going to be one long "almost" nightmare, we got more bad news. The middle of the 1st game, Gregg pulled his back muscle and we had no other passer to take his spot. We worked the ball around and wound up only having to set him once the rest of the game. We made a rotation change, and moved Wade to outside and Kurt to offsetter. We won a shaky game 2: 25-21 and put on a blocking clinic to win game 3: 15-8. Next, we had to play Las Vegas VBC, which was huge. With our new line up, we were sizeable as well, but not the most mobile nor possessing the best ball control. It all was exposed in game 1 when Las Vegas breezed through us 25-12. We settled down in game 2 and with some better blocking and transition, surprised the Las Vegas boys 25-23! Game 3 was a side out pointfest until we switched at 7-8. We committed a few errors, they made a nice play or 2 and before you know it, we lost 15-8 knocking us into the Silver Division. That evening, Rick caught some unbelievable bug and was completely useless the next morning. Gregg was still walking around like the Hunchback of ND, so we drafted the services of Raik, who was hanging around with us the remainder of the week. Although we would be disqualified if he were discovered, we would have forfeited otherwise so Raik played with us on Day 4. We played Tulsa VBC mid-day and lost 0-2 with no tremendous drama. We were technically out of the tournament and this was more like a scrimmage. They played just well enough to win; neither team looked like they were thrilled to be in the Silver Division (a.k.a. consolation bracket). After all the smoke cleared, we finished 14th overall, 6th in the Silver Bracket. A team from our pool, which we almost beat, won AA Nationals, and another team from our pool took 3rd! In the end, we thanked the Oosterbaans for their tremendous hospitality and got out of Columbus possibly together the last time as Darkside.     |
