After all this travel back here I met up with these two in Ohio:
… to watch a whole bunch of this:

When you have five kids it’s like a little luxury to have one all to yourself for a few days.  Loved following these two around Columbus.

(let’s just pretend they’re in focus up there!)

And that one-on-one time is extra fun when it involves watching volleyball.

I think I explained a little bit about this back in Max’s volleyball post back HERE, but as a quick re-cap, after deciding against doing Nationals this year at the beginning of the school season, Max had so much fun playing and got invited to play with a club team that was totally new to him.  He decided to go for one more steep learning curve experience by joining this new team.  Volleyball has always taken a slice out of our summers so I had been so excited to have one summer with no volleyball before Max leaves so at first I was pretty hesitant about this new idea.  But man, Max and Dave sure counseled and talked about it a lot and they must have been inspired to take this opportunity because it turned out to be such a great one.

It certainly wasn’t an easy adjustment for Max.  It was really hard work from the beginning to learn to work with a new setter and whole new team who play so differently from his school team.  So many days he came home from practice completely deflated.  But he worked his tail off to figure it out with pretty hard core practices that started at the beginning of June (that were luckily scheduled after he got home from work).  And all that hard work gave him even more love for this game.

Isn’t that kind of how life is?  The more we work for something, the more we appreciate it?  Max has always worked hard for volleyball, but this was above and beyond what he had done before and it was kind of cool to watch him test his limits.

This experience convinced me even more that volleyball just attracts good kids.  I have always adored the great kids Max has played with through the years.  Every single one of them seem to be good to the core.  This new team didn’t disappoint.  They had two summer tournaments, one in California before Nationals where Dave got to meet a lot of the kids and their great parents, so it was so fun for me to join in at Nationals and meet all these great families and kids I had heard about.

Not only are they good kids with good hearts, but they are good at volleyball.

Wow.

I loved watching their libero, seriously he was everywhere diving and jumping and twirling to get just right where he needed to be.

It was so fun to watch this other kid play too (below) who was on the all-tournament team with Max during his Brophy tournament and who helped beat our high school team in the semi finals for state volleyball.  He has been recruited to play at BYU and is the nicest kid.

This one jumping below played with Max in High Performance a few years ago and is such an excellent player:

(gotta love Max’s enthusiasm in that picture:)

Loved his coach too…super talented lady named Molly who played all over Europe before switching to coaching and her assistant who was also a “Molly.”  Really, really great ladies.

After the games each day we tried to explore a little bit of Columbus.  North Market is pretty awesome.
…and the loaf of chocolate buttermilk bread we got there…ha!

But the doughnuts were even better.

Anyway, here we are at the end of the second day…it was so fun to see these kids just keep winning mostly without even going to a third game. (They are “Spiral.”)
…which secured them in the “Gold Division.”  
By the beginning of the final day (the actual tournament) they were 9-0.

The tournament was single elimination.  They won the first, the second led them to the semi-finals where they happened to be matched up with another team from the desert…their big rival.

They gave them a run for their money but Spiral came out on top in the third game.

We were all SO excited.

Then it was on to the finals with an 11-0 winning streak.

The upper echelon teams (“USA Open”) played their finals first…which were a little hard to get a seat for…or even to see for that matter amidst all these tall volleyball players.

Here’s a better shot that I held my camera up way above my head to take:

The number one seed got booted in the finals.

Then it was our turn to play on that main court for the “USA Club” final.

These boys played their hearts out.

But ended up losing by two points in the third (all games were best of three in this tournament).

Of course they would have loved to win the whole thing, but they were pretty thrilled taking home the silver.

Max and his great coaches:

The one other kid from his high school team that played with Spiral:

The one who will be going to BYU with him:

…And the parents who adore this kid of theirs:

Several people have asked if Max is going to play for BYU, and the answer is that he would be ecstatic if they asked.  BYU is a very top notch team so he’d have to work his tail off but he did get invited to go to the camp with some of the players who are walking on next week so that’s kind of fun.

Who knows what will happen in the future taking into account Max’s mission timing (he’s leaving in December) and the head coach changes recently but whether or not he ever takes this sport to the next level, Nationals was a pretty great ride.  It was a huge learning curve for him and pushed him way out of his comfort level.  There were some games in the beginning where he didn’t even play.  But he kept working and listening and learning and working even harder and was able to play very well and have a pretty great experience.

Go Max!

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4 Comments

  1. I've been reading your blog for years! So fun to see you write about a visit to my hometown. Absolutely love reading about your family and how intentionally you parent.

  2. Man, your boy Max can get up there! Awesome that he worked so hard for that and was able to enjoy the game at that level. What an accomplishment! Wishing him all the best. It's great that you and Dave had some one on one time with him before he heads off to BYU. Great memories to cherish for sure! Lisa

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