President's Day (532)

On President's Day, there are lots of tournaments all over. I've been to President's Day tournaments in Omaha and Chicago, but there are many more places as well. The President's Day tournament is very big, just as big as a qualifier, and set up the same way too except you can not earn a bid from this tournament. This year our club team went to the President's Day tournament in Chicago, which I have never been to because in all of my past years playing I have gone to the President's Day tournament in Omaha. This tournament is a three day tournament, which means missing school for one or two days, depending on when you leave. I always like to leave somewhat early the day before we play, so I usually end up missing two days of school for three day tournaments. This time, I had a college visit, so I actually left very early in the morning the day before we played so that I could get to my visit on time, which was at about 11 am. I had a campus tour, meeting with the admissions office, lunch with the volleyball team and coach, and a meeting with the players, then the coach individually. After all of that was done, we went to the hotel we were staying at for the tournament and checked in. Of course, I was one of the first ones from my team at the hotel along with Shannon, who was also there for a college visit earlier that day. That night, the night before we played in the tournament, all the people who were already there hung out as a team at the hotel. There were some people who were not there yet because they left later, maybe after school or their parent's work. Those people get in at around bedtime, or past it.
In the morning, we all agreed to meet in the lobby and walk down to the convention center together. We can walk because we usually stay in hotels that are fairly close to the place we play at, thanks to Tim (our club director). We were one of the first teams to arrive because we had the 8 am match, and our club policy is to be there and hour early, so we got there at 7 right when it opened. Once they let people in, we went to our court to get our gear on and start warming up. That day we played a total of three matches, all in pool play. These matches would determine if we move up or down for the next day and how we are seeded in the bracket we are put into.
The next morning we met as a team again and walked to the convention center at the same time. That day we played in bracket play, which is where if you lose you are either done or play for placing, but you don't have a shot of winning the tournament anymore. We ended up getting 7th out of 40 teams, which is good, but we definitely could have done better. This tournament gave us things to work on and improve in practice!