Welcome To Martinez

We played the first Power League tournament of the season. And for as long as I can remember in our very young club volleyball experience, this is probably the first time we played a tournament that is relatively close to home. We were in Martinez, at NorCal Courts. Last year, aside from the San Mateo Convention Center, the only other "close" venue was Mare Island in Vallejo. Everything else was in lovely and charming Sacramento.

Our Bay to Bay 16-white team is in the Silver division, along with 8 other teams, based on League Qualifiers a couple of weeks earlier. We were in 7th spot. Call time for tourney #1 was 7:30am, as usual. We managed to get there in time, even after a brief stop at Peet's in Walnut Creek, for that early morning caffeine.

Our team parent, Chris, had so graciously arranged our food assignments for tailgating for all the other tournaments lined up for the season. For this tourney, our assignment was to bring 3-4 kinds for meats, totaling 3 pounds. Yesterday, after I dropped off Jake at practice, I went to Nob Hill in Campbell(??) and got 2 pounds of ham, a pound turkey, and a pound of salami.

Over at NorCal, there wasn't any room for tailgating. However, there was a park across the venue where teams could set up shop. One of our parents managed to arrive early and secured a picnic table. This information was then relayed to the rest of the parents via a group text messaging service, called GroupMe. Thanks again to our team parent for setting us all up for this. It really makes communicating within our team very convenient.

In the morning, we played 2 games in our pool, and officiated one. First match was against MVVC 16-2 (1st in Silver), whom we lost to in 2 sets. The second was another lost against AVBC Aloha 16-1 (6th in Silver), also in straight sets. I know we could beat these 2 teams. It's not that they were strong, but we just had one too many errors. After the second game, we officiated. While we did, half the boys grabbed something to eat. During the second set, the other half came for their fill.

In the afternoon, we went into bracket play. First match was against Slainte 16-1(3rd in Silver). It was a close match, and we ended up winning in 3 sets. Then, we officiated again, while some of the boys had lunch. The other half followed later. The next match was against the tough CRV 16-1 (5th in Silver). The last time we met at the Qualifiers, they beat us in straight sets. Same thing happened today.  The final match didn't have any bearing, as I found out later. I heard that we were playing for either 4th or 5th spot in the division. And this match was against NCVC 16-2 (8th in Silver) team. We lost this one, too. But it was one of those winnable matches though. It was fine, I guess. It was a no bearing game anyway.

At the end of the day, we remained in the Silver division, but moved up from 7th to 5th spot. I guess our win against 3rd-seed Slainte made the difference. Overall, I thought we played well. And there were 3 teams that I thought were definitely beatable. With us staying in Silver made me, and I guess everyone else, happy because the venue for the next tournament would be at nearby San Jose City College. Had we gone down to Bronze, we would be making that painful trek up north to charming Rocklin in Sacramento.

Great job, guys. See you in San Jose.