This was quite an experience. Playing in the back yard of a mansion was truly like playing in the Collusseum, and we were the Barbarian Horde.
Some of my predictions came true: we were going to have problems with their height; we were going to have problems following their rules; because of net height and their height, we were going to have problems playing 2 point guards, or even one, which takes us out of our standard game; we had to learn the court while doing.
Predictions which, for the most part, did not come true: if we play "our game," even under these conditions, we could prevail. We failed to play our game for many of the above reasons, and the Dallas Sith Lords were able to deal with some of our tricks at an unanticipated level.
Day 1: we got slaughtered:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKSYN-tbNRs
15-2, 15-4, 15-5, 15-7, 15-8, 15-10, not in any particular order, if memory serves. There was one win with our team vs. their starting team. I was not part of it. Mercifully, we mixed it up after a bit. I think I won 2 games. Some of us won none.
It was a very humbling, yet instructive, experience. We were the weaker teams in very important ways.
I'm reminded of a (paraphrased) line that one Creepy/Dan said when he first joined our beloved corps. "I got beat, really bad (by that little fella they call Chief). I didn't like that. So, I guess I have two choices. I can quit, or I can fight. I choose to fight."
The way we played on day one, we might as well have come up wearing "Scrub" T-shirts.
But, in true Panda fashion, after licking our wounds and drowning our sorrows way too much, we decided to fight again.
We took instruction from the players who know that court, fairly well, and did better on Sunday, although a couple of their A team members were not present.
Pretty sure we messed up the whole structure of their tournament system on Sunday, because we were struggling to survive and adapt. So kudos for letting us play and altering the system from the way it was originally planned.
I agree with LJ on a couple of things. Most satisfying win on Sunday was when our B team, consisting of me, LJ, Dan, Ronin Steve, and B team pickups Javi and Mikey, beat what I suspect was a Dallas B team, where our B was more or less overmatched by their B. But we won.
Perhaps they had been told tales of our suck on day 1, so expected that we would be crushed. We weren't. And we weren't swept away like dry leaves in the wind, which as admittedly rare, I detected some shame humping on the other side.
LJ wanted to know why we are called Pandas. Shall I tell you? It's the least I can do. For reasons that currently escape me, I ended up with a stuffed panda toy. I then found abandoned (5 days) laundry in the Argosy laundry room that had kids clothes, including a tank top that said "I'm Famous" on it. Fit well on the Panda bear.
The Panda mascot then came out along with the Optimus statue you are more or less familiar with.
The theme was simple: Optimus represents competition--this is not recreation, this is a sport. And we take heads. The Panda represented cameraderie, because pandas have a friendly reputation, somewhat unearned. Navy added that pandas are friendlier than Koalas, which are also cute, but actually ill tempered. Koala was the preceding term for scrub, or not us.
I will add that pandas are notoriously hard to breed, making them rare.
Now you know the story, Lip.
I've always said it takes at least 5 years to really take a player from rookie to starting status. People have disagreed with me. Do you disagree after what happened up north at the Hot Gates?
We might as well have showed up wearing "scrub" T-shirts.
So, what do we do with that sort of humbling? Get better. How do we do that? Opinions vary.
We've been trying, since the beginning, to get people to stop jungling the net. Agreed. Where there is divergence is when it comes to how to keep things closest to "actual" volleyball rules.
Simplest answer would be to drain the pool and play actual sand or indoor rules. Strike that. Simplest answer would be to play sand or indoor ball. But we're not doing that, for some reason.
What is that reason? And how close do we want to follow the "real" rules, considering we play in 3-5ft of water, which very much makes this a different game?
Different pools have come up with different solutions. Some of them may astound you. For example, I was told the Arkansas mansion owner once got beat in his own venue by a right handed server. After that, everyone had to serve left handed. No word on what left handed servers had to do, or how he checked to see if you were lying:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT0TBWg3C3k
We are street ballers. Who grew up playing water, not something else. Those who want to blow away every innovation we've come up with in a sand storm will need to state their reasons, on the website, please.
