16 Gold MLK tournament

16 Gold Finishes 3rd at MLK Tournament

The MLK tournament in Eugene was our first tournament of the year.  We did not really feel like a "team" yet going into the tournament, due to the nature of our pod training and working on fundamentals at the beginning of the first training cycle.  So everyone was excited to finally get to play together and see what this team is all about.  We won all three pool play matches on the first day, beating CCJV and 253 Elite (WA) easily in  two, and then Seattle Jrs. in a close three set match.  We saw right away that our team has a good blend of talent and competitiveness, as we fought hard in our first real test in the win against Seattle Jrs.  Day two also saw us win our pool, winning our matches against Webfoot 15's, All Out, and NPJ all in two sets.  Serving was a huge strength, as the girls showed they were capable of consistently serving tough, hitting areas, and confidently mixing up their serves.  Along with the 16 aces we had on the day, we had only 6 errors and caused a lot of disruption in the other teams' offense.  Our first match in bracket play on Monday was against a very strong Athena team.  We managed to scrape by with a win, but it wasnt pretty, winning 25-21, 8-25, 16-14.  And yes, you read that right,  8-25 in the second set.  Everything that could go wrong did!  But the girls were able to let it go and regroup for the third set.  They showed a lot of character as a team to come back from that second set and compete hard, ultimately winning the match.  By far the best moment in the tournament for our team! Unfortunately, we lost in the semi-final  match to a tough Lake Tapps (WA) team 22-25, 25-18, 9-15. This put us finishing in a tie for third place in the tournament.   But we came away from the tournament with a better sense of self, and a lot of things to work on both individually as a team.  We found that along with the talent that we knew we had, we also possess a depth of character that was exciting to discover, and great chemistry that will help us through the ups and downs of the year.