18's MLK Tourney at Univ of Oregon

The MLK tourney was the coming out party for the 18's as this was the first competition of the year for the team.   We started the tourney seeded #7 which is a high seed for this new team. But in the first day we did live up to the seed by finishing 3-0 for the day.   We started off playing Reach 18-1 from the Tacoma area and won in 2 25-16 and 25-14. All players contributed and played well. Our second match was against Boise Stealth and the results were even better as the scores were 25-16 and 25-6. In our 3rd match and our toughest challenge we played a solid Kent Juniors 17's. This team was one of the top 16's team last year. After a 23-25 loss we gathered up and played volleyball and returned with a 25-16 and 15-7 win. 

Day 2 started off with a good match right away at 8am. A very scrappy Excell team seemed like they dug everything and every bounce fell their way. But OJVA came thru with a 25-23 and 25-23  win. In our 10am match we played DSK and had a easier win with everyone playing well 25-19 and 25 21. In our last match of the day we played the always competitive Columbia Juniors from the Tri-Cities area in Washington.  They had beaten the other teams in the pool very easily and the match could go either way.  The 18's Served and Passed very well and we clearly hit on all cylinders as we stepped up to the challenge and won 25-21 and 25-19. This qualified us for the Gold division as one of the top 10 teams in the 96 team event.  

Day 3 we played another team from Boise that came in to the tourney very badly seeded as a #4 (#31Overall) in their first day pool. They then proceeded to beat every team for the next 2 days and came into the gold division as the #10 team.  Both teams played very well and both teams showed their strengths. The Boise team has played together for 3 years and it clearly showed in their team play and very disciplined defense and transisition. We lost the first set 28-26 and in another dog fight we came up short 26-24 in the second.  Boise went on to win the next 2 matches and only lost to eventual champs KJ 18's.

Overall I was very happy with all of the play and all of the different lineups that we used going into the Qualifier this weekend.

Steve Suttich

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