Regional Volleyball Tournament 2017

Occasionally we see a news story about a girl who has made her way onto a football team in some manner or another. It's always a good story that a female is crossing boundaries into a predominantly male sport.

Well here we have a situation of some fine young men who are playing a sport that has been mostly dominated by females.  At the age they're playing, our boy's team, the Average Joes, doesn't have much male competition and has a much wider age-range on their teams.  I believe we have an ages 7 - 13 on our team with most of the boys being around 10 - 12, including Robby.  

So this past weekend, the Average Joes became the first boys team to participate in what was always a girls only regional tournament.  How did the little critters do?   Well you'll just have to read on to find out...

Caleb all dressed up, not as a coach but rather an owner!

Breaktime after a couple of hard-fought battles.  The two girls laying down, one of which Robby is resting his feet on, are the two gals who are our high school aged assistant coaches.  I don't have any clue which events they will attend and which ones they won't.  There's likely a method to the madness but I don't pay attention so I've likely missed it.  All I know is that they have a lot of fun together.

This is warm-ups on day two.  Day 1 was at Simpson college in Indianola, day 2 was at a place just outside of waterworks park in Des Moines.  Looks like a tiny building from the outside, but then you walk in and walk and walk and walk before you reach the volleyball courts.

This is a shot of "most" of the volleyball courts in the small building. 

Some of our boys had to leave for other sports on day 2.  These are the critters who could stick around to referee the final games in their age group.  Everyone but that cute little black-shirted critter were receiving their second place medals.

A few families and their boys decided to go out for lunch after the games. Here's 5 current players and a future player (hint: he has a black shirt on!) prior to their meals arriving.

The boys took second place overall.  They ran into a buzzsaw with a 6-foot gal who could serve like a BEAST in the final match!  She was across the net from our 7-year old at one point and it was quite striking!

Overall, they did great and I was sad to see the season end.  I can't wait for next season to watch the boys continue to grow together into an even greater team!