We won the whole tournament!
Our team roster:
Emily Laughlin, Darren Smith, Brandon Bowers, Emily Biechler, Elisa Ott, Trevor Jones, Maegan Keperling, Matt DuVall, Will Welsh, Heather Morris, Tanner Burkhardt, Cameron Strosser, Michael Weber, Madeline Zapata, Lucas Charney, Cody Straub, Matt Hatch, Cole Bigelow, Steven Morris, Nick Tulli, Ian Martzall, Erin Patterson and our three adults players: Jerry Bigelow, Troy Jones and Justin Watkins
Our Best Tournament Ever
We went 9-0 through the day, but beyond the quantity of wins, the quality of our wins was the best ever. Our play absolutely dominated the field and we never faced a time when we were close to losing. In fact, the semi-final playoff game was our quickest game of the day and barely lasted 5 minutes! A number of times I looked over to the other team's sideline to see double digit players who had gotten thrown out while our sideline was without a single player! We were just catching everything teams were throwing and gunning them back.
And most important to me, it was our cleanest, calmest tournament. Other than our talk before we left, I never had to remind our team to play with integrity...There was very little tension between us and other teams and very little talk of cheating. (Usually every team complains about every other team's play) It was a dominating performance and we played like champions with our attitudes, integrity and words. That to me is the greatest success of it all.
We had such a fun day playing with each other and getting pumped for each game. We had a wonderful cheerleading crew (Pam Bigelow, Kyle Bigelow and our camera woman, Erika Straub) and a closing worship service that got a number of our students involved up on stage (thanks to Tanner, Steven and Madeline for putting us on the map!). After some great worship, students were challenged to give their lives to Christ to let Him do great things for the Kingdom NOW, just as He has used young people throughout the Bible and history til now.
We are happy to return champs of the tournament...We celebrated with a trip to Wendys on the way home and celebratory frostys! We won two bags of brand new balls to break in and practice with for next fall along with championship t-shirts we'll all wear proudly as soon as they come in. Thanks to everyone who came with us for not just a great win, but a great day of fellowship and giving God glory with our actions.
