Couldn't Dodge Disappointment...

We returned to Messiah College Sunday to defend our championship title. Touting a team of 22 teenagers and 3 adults (Thanks to Jerry Bigelow!!) everyone felt confident and excited to repeat as champs. But as we looked around the gym, we knew the competition was going to be more fierce than last time. Out of 11 teams there, there were bigger and badder looking groups so we knew we'd need to step up our game.

But after our first 4 games, we were sitting at 2-2, a place we'd never been before considering we'd only amassed 2 losses in the past two tournaments combined! But we knew there was still hope because other power house teams were struggling as well. So our fan base cheered us on from the rafters and we pulled ourselves together to play harder.

We won the next two games and positioned ourselves in 3rd place overall, with several teams behind us. We were told that the top 4 teams would make the playoffs and that the regular competition would be cut off at 4:45. We were scheduled to play Mechanicsburg Brethren in Christ next, who had not been beaten all day long. It was getting close to the cut off time and it looked like we may not play them but rather punch our ticket for the playoffs...Then the announcement: "GRACE VERSUS MCBIC ON COURT 3!"

There was a lot of pressure on this game. With a loss, we could possibly lose our spot in the playoffs. But our team had hit its stride after the first four games and we did what no team could do throughout the whole tournament: We beat the undefeated McBic squad. In fact, we not only won, we easily controlled the game. Although it was an intense fight, we took the lead early on and finished with more than half our team still on the court.

But in some sense, we seemed to shoot ourselves in the foot: You see, the time limit for each game was 15 minutes, but it was rare that a game ever pushed the 10 minute mark. That last game against McBic was the longest game of the day, finishing just 30 seconds shy of the 15 minute mark. Victory was assured us about halfway through the game, but we struggled to close the deal, leaving a small group of stragglers from the other team to remain on the court and extend the game.

Needless to say, we returned to the tournament board after the game excited to see who we would face in the first round of the playoffs. But the judges seemed concerned about something and were shifting their papers around trying to decide something. Why weren't they putting up the playoff schedule? What was the problem?!

They determined that there was not enough time to have a 4 team playoff, but the top 2 teams would move straight into the Championship Game. We couldn't believe it. We had just clicked as a team and were poised to enter the playoffs as the team to beat. We may never know whether things would have been different if we had finished that last game sooner, but it was clear after watching the final game that there would have been a great chance that we could have won the championship trophy a second tournament in a row.

It was an unfortunate way to remember that the day was in fact all about a game, that really wasn't important in the end. We had a great day of playing, fellowship and food before spending time worshiping together with the other couple hundred teenagers from youth groups all across the area (including Maryland!)

We'll be looking forward to the tournament in the fall for sure.