So... did we win or what?

We've been attending this largely Korean church in Dallas and when I found out there was an interchurch volleyball tournament, I signed up figuring sports is as good a forum as any to get to meet folks. The tournament was this past weekend, involving a total of 11 Korean churches, but with only 4 teams in the A division. It was entertaining, although I didn't really understand any of the official proceedings since they were conducted in Korean.

I'm not sure that a sports tournament is necessarily the best way to develop friendships between different communities. Scrimmaging, open gyms, or intermixing squads helps people get to know each other in more laidback situations, but putting on a team jersey and playing for a trophy just brings out competitive fire, at least for me. There was at least a few times where I was screaming at the ref (provided by one of the teams not playing) about a missed call during a point and had to apologize afterwards :)

The tournament was 9-man volleyball, which I hadn't played before, but didn't really follow the standard rules I had found online. It seems like an Asian invention for lazy volleyball players, which suited me pretty well. For us, it mostly meant we just played a single position without rotating and had nine players on the court. It was perfect for me since I just played defense in the middle (no tiresome blocking responsibilities) and hit mostly medium sets out of the middle (no tiresome quick sets in the middle).

We ended up sweeping through round robin with the other 3 teams and pulling out victories in both playoff games to bring home the trophy! It was good that I had almost no other responsibilities than hitting; I was plenty exhausted from hitting non-stop as the primary recipient of our sets. My favorite moment was actually on a play that I got stuffed by a 6'5" Korean giant, but while the opponents went into instant celebration, the ball popped up off my head and a teammate poked it back over near gigantor for the point. Volleyball can also be an aggravating game since teams celebrate so much between points, so of course I immediately pointed at him and laughed ;) While my teammates called me MVP, Ruth should probably then be co-MVP; I spent the morning matches getting into a decent rhythm but then just tried to crush the ball after she came to watch in the afternoon :)

It's unfortunate that it's hard to get any sort of pick-up volleyball game going since it's not a widely played sport. It's so satisfying since it's the only sport where I can just swing as hard as possible without worrying about an unforced error. With golf and even softball (!), swinging hard often results in whiffing, which is more than a little embarrassing. There's actually a softball tourney coming up in a couple weeks and I agreed to join if they could recruit enough players for a no pressure B team :)