Tomi found out through Richard earlier this week that there was a volleyball tournament this weekend at his church and immediately started recruiting people to go play with her. She played in high school, and was pumped to play in a tournament again. Bryce (who also played in high school), Andy (who is naturally gifted at all sports), and I (who have little to no volleyball experience/skill) agreed to take part in said tournament.
When we showed up there yesterday morning, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. Despite the fact that most people assume I have some propensity for sports because of my height (I top out at 6 feet), that is not really the case. I love playing volleyball recreationally, but I literally had never played in an actual competitive game before. I wasn't even sure I would be able to serve the ball over the net from regulation distance.
It ended up that the tournament wasn't too serious of an affair--mostly a youth group style event with teams of high school/college students--so our team wasn't at too big of a disadvantage having never played together. Of the six teams registered, at least four (including us) were amatures, for all intents and purposes. That meant we had a decent chance at ranking at least third or fourth over all. Except that they decided to put us in the bracket with the two teams who regularly practice and compete together. We managed to hold our own decently against them, but lost in the end, which automatically put us in the losers bracket (we won our last game and ended up fifth over all). My strongly competitive nature was placated mostly by the fact that we didn't get crushed like bugs, even by the awesome teams.
But the most surprising thing about the whole tournament was the skill level of the people who don't play volleyball competitively or train on a regular basis. Almost everyone was able to serve effectively with at least some consistency and all of the teams pulled off a bump-set-spike play pretty often. If we had tried to hold a tournament like that with my youth group at home, we would have been lucky if the ball made it back and forth over the net at all.
So even though we ended up on the low side of the rankings, it was a fun (albeit long) day. And I know I got a good workout--the soreness in my legs today is proof of that. =)