Pro-Am Champs!

I won a flat screen TV this weekend!!! Yes, that's right, besides all of the other highlights of my weekend, I actually won a flat screen TV! So awesome!

This weekend was the Huntington Beach Pro-Am. Huntington Beach is about a 45 minute drive south of me (for those that might not know southern California very well). Anyway, the tournament was scheduled for Saturday, and Nancy Mason (my awesome coach) was supposed to play with the daughter of a really good friend of hers. Well, as you all might have heard, there was lots of rain and more importantly, tsunami warnings for California beaches, so people were not even allowed on the sand Saturday. Here's where things get really exciting for me...

Nancy's partner couldn't play Sunday, so Nancy had already asked if I could play Sunday if the tournament got rescheduled. I, of course, jumped at the opportunity! Not only do I get to play with someone as good as Nancy, I also got to play with my coach (an invaluable experience). And, it's just another excuse to be out on the beach all day long playing volleyball, which will never get old to me! Anyway, Sunday morning rolls around and we head down to Huntington about 7 am for a 7:45 start time. I'm going to throw Scott under the bus really quick and mention that on the way down to the tournament we got pulled over :/ Definitely not a fun way to start the day! Not that getting a ticket is funny in any way, but the "funniest" part about him getting pulled over was that about 5 minutes before he got pulled over he said "The flow of traffic right now is 80, I'm lovin' this!" Haha, oops! Anyway, we were a little worried we might be late, but still weren't too stressed. Little did we know, we would show up about 8 and not start until 10:30! Gotta love beach volleyball!

The tournament schedule was a little chaotic because there were some drop outs due to the switch from Saturday to Sunday, so Nancy, Scott and I went and grabbed a nice little breakfast and hung out for awhile. We strolled back down to the beach around 9:00 and there still wasn't much happening. Anyway, our first match was pretty close, but we were just getting warmed up. Plus, even though Nancy trains me 3 times a week, we have never played together before so we worked through getting used to that. In the first match, we lost the first game, then dominated the second and won a close 3rd game. We played back to back so we started our next match almost right away. The second match was against Heather Hughes and Alicia Zamparelli. I played/trained with Heather a bit over the past few months and knew she was a great player so it wasn't going to be easy! And, Alicia has been around the game awhile and makes a decent amount of main draws every summer so she's good too! Anyway, we lost our second match 22-20 both games. Such a bummer, but Nancy and I both hate losing so I was pretty sure that wasn't going to happen again!

Those two matches concluded pool play so we started with play-offs. Play-offs were supposed to be one game to 21, but Nancy decided she wanted to play 2 games out of 3, so she told the tournament director that and he changed it (gotta love being an AVP star, haha). Our first play off match was against my really good friend Cayley Thurlby, and Olivia Waldowski. Once again, both really great players! It was a close match, but Nancy and I ended up coming on strong at the end and pulling it out. (Keep in mind that even though I'm exhausted, I've already improved exponentially throughout the day just playing with Nancy and getting all of her advice!) The second play off match we played against Heather and Alicia again! This match was a better outcome for us though and we pulled it out in two games. Nancy and I were just getting going, haha, but really we were both exhausted but 100 percent determined to win. After that, the sun was starting to set so we had to go back to one game to 21. We played two girls about my age who I've played with and practice with before and it was a close game through about half way and then we started playing really well and took it and ran with it.

So, that puts us into the finals!!! I'm so pumped at this point! And, if you know Nancy at all, you know she is seriously getting into it and is demanding that we will win this game! They went up at the beginning of the game, but about halfway through Nancy and I tied it up, and then pulled through at the end with a few runs of points!! It was SOOO awesome!!!

At this point, the sun was basically setting so we gathered up our things, grabbed our flat screens and said thanks to the tournament people, snapped a picture and left! It was such a fun experience and such an incredible learning experience! I will definitely never forget it.

I need to say a special thanks to Scott for being such a trooper and driving us out there, sitting there all day, helping shag, filming for my Mom, getting us food, and all kinds of other really nice things :) Thanks!!