Courting Disaster - Victorious!

Update: We won our first match, and lost our second match in the playoffs. So we finished off the season in 6th place!

Last Tuesday Courting Disaster played our last two matches of the regular season. We also won our first match!

Now, I'm sure you're thinking, "Wow, Courting Disaster must really suck if their last game of the season was their only win." And if you are thinking that, you would be wrong. W-R-O-N-G.

For the past three seasons, Courting Disaster has played in a rec league. The "goal" in the rec league is to get the ball over the net any way you can. There's no hard hitting, including spiking or jump serving. Through a chain of events (i.e. us registering late), we got bumped into the Intermediate league for the winter season. Intermediate league is more about setting up the full bump-set-spike combo. It's slightly more advanced.

There are a lot of teams in the intermediate league; 32 to be exact. So the first three weeks of the season were dedicated to seeding rounds. The theory is that after the seeding round, you should be playing in a smaller intermediate league with teams that are more at your level.

The good news is that we were probably somewhere in the 14-16th place at the end of seeding. Then the teams were divided into four divisions (A-D), with 8 teams in each. So.. We ended up in the "B" league-- which seems pretty good to me! The bad news is that we were at the bottom of the B league. So for the following four weeks, we were pummeled by the other teams. Again.. And again...

This isn't to say our team was discouraged. Team morale is high! Everyone is there to have fun, and fortunately no one on our team is super competitive. We laugh a lot, and I think we've gotten a lot better too.

So that brings us to Tuesday night.

Since it's the last game night of regular season, we decided to meet up for team dinner beforehand. We met at BP's and had some cheap Tuesday-night pasta. Spaghetti! Fettucini! Linguine! In HUGE heaping portions! With huge amounts of MSG?

We arrived at the gym a couple hours later feeling naseous, queasy, bloated and generally unpleasant... I think I may have had heart burn for the second time in my life.

Damn you BP's!

But a little indigestion couldn't hold us back! We won our first game-- which seemed to perturb our opponents, those Damn Dirty Apes. While we were laughing and joking, they were saying things like, "Come on guys! What's going on?" to each other. I guess they weren't used to losing. In the end, yelling at each other worked for them. They did come back and beat us in the second game and the tie-breaker. But we definitely had more fun.

So we moved on to play the next team, the Hard Strokes. These games were a comedy of errors... But we came out victorious!

To summarize our victorious games (and blatantly copying Captain Ashley's previous award format), I propose the following awards for the night:

Most Valuable Players: Dave and Lionel

Although Dave could probably single-handedly win games for us, he is all about setting up plays for other people to take. He has a knack for slowing things down. Same goes for Lionel. Lionel has mastered the art of spiking, and is excellent at reminding us to take our time to set up plays. These two guys are class acts!

Most Off-Colour Joke: Jeff

As Ed sets up to serve...

Amanda: I'm afraid Ed's going to hit me with his balls.

Jeff: You're not the first girl to say that.

Most Unpredictable Spike: Ed

Ed has mastered the spike wind-up. When he gets the full follow-through motion, he drills the ball into the ground! He's unstoppable! No one can dig those out! Unfortunately his aim is a little unpredictable, and sometimes the balls ends up in the ground... On our side of the net.

Most Ridiculous Move: Andy

We're glad Andy is willing to sacrifice his body for the win... But we don't want him to get hurt! I'm not sure if this week's ridiculous move was as awesome as the time it looked like he was going to run up the wall, ninja style. Here is a stick man reinactment of Andy's Most Ridiculous Move. Reports indicate he has a volleyball related butt-bruise.

Most Painful Hit: Amanda

Way to take it in the crotch!

And where did that mystery arm bruise come from?

Most Vicious Blocking: Kim

I have an observation. When I try to block, I almost always close my eyes as a defensive reflex. Of course, then I can't see where the ball is coming from, and I usually miss it. But when Kim gets her hands up at the net, 9 times out of 10, she beats the pants off of the opponent she's blocking. Perhaps she has mastered the art of keeping her eyes open?

Best Captaining & Nicest Ass: Ashley

Thanks for keeping us all organized, Captain! In addition to being the best captain, Ashley always wins the award for "Nice Ass." Or what I'm ACTUALLY saying, "Nice, Ash!"

Maybe we'll cause an upset in the playoff round.

Wish us luck!