Northern Lights (498)

Earlier I had written about my club team's tournaments and how we could not add the Windy City Qualifier, which meant we only had one qualifier other than regionals this season. Well, there is good news. We got into the Northern Lights Qualifier! We were first on the waiting list to get into the tournament, which means that if a team dropped out, we would be the first to get that spot. We got the spot, so a team must have dropped out! Our team first found out when we were all at school. We were texting about it in our team group chat and we were all very excited about it. We did not think that we would actually get that spot because we did not think that anyone would want to drop out.  We would never drop out, but we are glad that someone else did! Before we knew we were going we scheduled two JVA tournaments, one in Des Moines and one in Kansas City. Now, with the addition of the Northern Lights Qualifier, we have three out of town tournaments in a row. This is great and fun but at the same time it can be exhausting. That is a lot of travel all in a row, and not to mention missing school. Three weeks in a row we will be missing one or two days for the tournaments. Even though it will be a little bit of a struggle, I am still glad that we made it into the Northern Lights Qualifier and have another chance to qualify for nationals with a open bid. We were very close last time, finishing only two sports away from a bid.
Northern Lights Qualifier is hosted in Minneapolis by the club team called Northern Lights, who would have guessed. It is in a huge convention center with lots of courts and multiple age groups and divisions. There are so many teams that come and play that they have to split the playing into a morning and afternoon wave. On the first day the morning or afternoon waves for pool play are random. The second and third day they give the morning wave to the teams who did the best the day before. For example, if you win your pool and get to move up to the gold bracket you will definitely play morning wave the next day. That is just how it works. Personally I like the morning wave better because you get done earlier and you are not playing later in the evening. That gives you time to do stuff after you play, whether it be team bonding, taking a nap, shopping, or going out to eat. Courts can be behind schedule if the matches beforehand took a long time, so sometimes the afternoon wave goes really late. One time last year at a qualifier we got done playing our last match at about 10:30 pm and we left the convention center at about 10:45.