Regional Volleyball Tourney

We did it, folks! Our team took second in the Regional Mixed Six VB Tourney, which gave us a ticket to the state tournament in Anchorage. Two of our players were named to the All-Tournament team and one was even named MVP. I'm excited to take these kids to the city as a reward for all of their hard work this season.

As stated earlier, I was the tournament coordinator for this event. I ran my buns off from Wednesday through Saturday the week before Thanksgiving. Though we did great as a team, the whole coordinating experience was exhausting. I have a newfound respect for all who put on tournaments for my teams as a kid and teenager. My fellow teachers as well as the custodial staff were awesome and helped around the clock to make sure we had ticket takers, line judges, scorekeepers, meals, and concessions. The entire region was at our school, which meant that every classroom was utilized as a sleeping room for the 10 visiting teams as well as the referees. (Remember, no hotels or restaurants.) I made at least four airport runs to pick up teams, and the school counselor made about eight more. The cooks were the real heroes of the weekend, having prepared breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for the 10 teams, their chaperones, and coaches from Wednesday through Sunday. Math Teacher figured out that it came to somewhere over 3,500 plates served.

What I did not anticipate was the lack of follow-through demonstrated by the volunteers I'd lined up to line judge and keep score. Some showed up on time, others left in the middle of matches, and still others showed up with five minutes to spare to cross their names off the sign-up sheet and leave. My new role for the weekend immediately became that of finding line judges and scorekeepers at the start of every single match, and sometimes in between games of matches. I did time in every role myself. Turns out some people signed up others as a joke, and some just couldn't seem to back up their words with actions. Thankfully, other teachers and a few community members stepped up to the plate, and most everything went off without a hitch. Needless to say, this novel situation did make for a pretty stressful few days.

As I vented about this situation to a couple close friends, I came to see how truly different and difficult it is living here. In perfect hindsight, it is absolutely foreign to me that parents and volunteers would back out at the last minute for reasons like needing a cigarette or needing to eat supper. My regular reaction would be something along of the lines of "Couldn't you do that before your scheduled volunteer time?" Instead, what came out of my mouth at the time was something like, "OK, well, thanks for being here! We'll figure it out!" followed by a forced yet cheerful smile. I started to fault myself for not planning better, but another teacher said something that stuck with me. "Susan, even if you had put in 50 more hours planning, things still would have gone exactly as they did. The planes still would have been late and people still would have failed to show up for the jobs they signed up for. Things are going as smoothly as they can. This is how events always run around here." I finally relaxed after that statement.

It was all worth it! See below.

   

Second place finish - headed to State!

Kindergarten Teacher, 4th/5th Teacher, and myself with one
of our youngest fans. We girls treated ourselves to a movie
night after this marathon of a weekend.

So, there you have it! I have a couple more posts in the works. Sorry this one took so long, but as we all know, this is a crazy time of year! Next up is the tale of my visit to the great Continental US for turkey day. Ciao!