Ninilchik Spikefest

After three more matches, the Nome Nanooks managed to place third in
the Ninilchik Spikefest tournament.

We had to wake up awfully early this morning to get ready for the
first game of the day, against the Seldovia Sea Otters at 9 am. We
managed to beat them in two pretty close games, 2 games to 0.

Then we were off for a bit. Our next game wasn't until 3 pm against
the eventual winners of the tournament, Su-Valley. So we took a nice
little thirty mile drive south to Land's End in Homer, Alaska. That
was marvelous scenery. We caught a view of St. Augustine, that
volcano that was spewing forth some dust in recent months. We saw
three bald eagles and I got some great shots of them. I say, this
scenery here makes me long for trees once again!

When we came back, the girls played hard, but they came up short to
Su-Valley. Su-Valley really whomped on us the first game but the
second game was a lot closer. I almost thought we would pull it out.
We lost 0-2.

Then for the marquee matchup for the night, we played the hometeam
Ninilchik Wolverines and lost two really tight games. We played well
and, in fact, played the best of the whole tournament here. The girls
were really setting each other up well. It gave me lots of ideas to
utilize practice drills in getting better prepared. But that's what
these little tournaments really are, practice games. They don't have
any bearing on our conference whatsoever so I get to see how the
girls work with each other to make them better for conference
matches. We have Kotzebue coming to Nome on Friday and then don't
play anyone in our conference (which only consists of us, Kotz, and
Barrow), until Regionals. I still don't understand how or why we
don't play Barrow until Regionals, but that is the case here.

We still took home hardware from this tournament. A shiny little
trophy that says Third Place.