After a LONG day at the Academy Harper's Invitational on Friday (April 16), Brooke had to switch to volleyball mode for her last club volleyball tournament.
We had to make an hour's drive to Estancia (17 miles from Moriarty) to the gym where our 15s New Mexico Blaze Volleyball Team would play their games.
The girls started off with a bit of a snafu when the head judge threatened to disqualify them for wearing different colored ZEBRA spandex (the girls thought it would be cute since they all had different colored zebra spandex). The issue was that the spandex all had to match or the team could not advance to the GOLD bracket in the tournament. Brooke and some of the other girls were smart enough to also throw their black and their red spandex into their gym bags...just in case :) A few of the girls had to scramble and ask around to see if any friends on other teams brought extra black spandex. One of our moms headed over to the dollar store and found some black shorts that passed for black spandex...WHEW!
Our girls played game after game in pool play. They only lost 1 game out of the 6 but ended up winning all their matches due to beating a team by more points. This qualified them for the GOLD bracket for tournament play (there were 2 brackets: a Gold and a Silver). They faced many great teams including "Fusion" from Los Alamos who had a girl well over 6 feet tall in my estimation. They lost the first game but then came roaring back to win the 2nd game and then the tiebreaker 3rd game.
Another team they faced was an undefeated (and very spirited) 16s team from Ruidoso, NM named "Chaos." The girls on Chaos had amazing camaraderie which enabled them to take a quick lead. Our girls were hot and tired and were down their two tallest players (who were both hitters) as they had other commitments that day. Throughout the tournament, we only had one substitute. We as parents knew we had to pump our girls up so we started cheering and chanting which seemed to freak out the other team. Our girls responded and ended up beating these older girls two games straight!
Tired, and emotionally drained, our girls made it to the championship round to face a well-rested team from Albuquerque (ARVC 1). ARVC was entered into a smaller group for pool play and seemed to be watching more than playing. They had several amazing hitters on their team who took the steam out of our team's quest for first place.
I am very proud of this group of girls who put a little volleyball club together this year. Brooke and best friend Candace enjoyed getting to know freshman girls from another Albuquerque High School, Sandia High School. We love our team and our coaches: Catherine Hanna, with assistants Madi and Leandra. Congratulations on a great club season girls!
Top left to right: Marissa, Sara, Coach Cat, Candace, Jessica. Bottom left to right: Brooke, Dani, and Gabby (missing were Kelsey, Anna, and assistant coaches Leandra and Madi who had their senior prom that day).
Brooke and Candace with one of their best friends, Harleigh, who was on the ARVC 15 1s.
We had to make an hour's drive to Estancia (17 miles from Moriarty) to the gym where our 15s New Mexico Blaze Volleyball Team would play their games.
The girls started off with a bit of a snafu when the head judge threatened to disqualify them for wearing different colored ZEBRA spandex (the girls thought it would be cute since they all had different colored zebra spandex). The issue was that the spandex all had to match or the team could not advance to the GOLD bracket in the tournament. Brooke and some of the other girls were smart enough to also throw their black and their red spandex into their gym bags...just in case :) A few of the girls had to scramble and ask around to see if any friends on other teams brought extra black spandex. One of our moms headed over to the dollar store and found some black shorts that passed for black spandex...WHEW!
Our girls played game after game in pool play. They only lost 1 game out of the 6 but ended up winning all their matches due to beating a team by more points. This qualified them for the GOLD bracket for tournament play (there were 2 brackets: a Gold and a Silver). They faced many great teams including "Fusion" from Los Alamos who had a girl well over 6 feet tall in my estimation. They lost the first game but then came roaring back to win the 2nd game and then the tiebreaker 3rd game.
Another team they faced was an undefeated (and very spirited) 16s team from Ruidoso, NM named "Chaos." The girls on Chaos had amazing camaraderie which enabled them to take a quick lead. Our girls were hot and tired and were down their two tallest players (who were both hitters) as they had other commitments that day. Throughout the tournament, we only had one substitute. We as parents knew we had to pump our girls up so we started cheering and chanting which seemed to freak out the other team. Our girls responded and ended up beating these older girls two games straight!
Tired, and emotionally drained, our girls made it to the championship round to face a well-rested team from Albuquerque (ARVC 1). ARVC was entered into a smaller group for pool play and seemed to be watching more than playing. They had several amazing hitters on their team who took the steam out of our team's quest for first place.
I am very proud of this group of girls who put a little volleyball club together this year. Brooke and best friend Candace enjoyed getting to know freshman girls from another Albuquerque High School, Sandia High School. We love our team and our coaches: Catherine Hanna, with assistants Madi and Leandra. Congratulations on a great club season girls!
Top left to right: Marissa, Sara, Coach Cat, Candace, Jessica. Bottom left to right: Brooke, Dani, and Gabby (missing were Kelsey, Anna, and assistant coaches Leandra and Madi who had their senior prom that day).
Brooke and Candace with one of their best friends, Harleigh, who was on the ARVC 15 1s.
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