All of the pictures taken this year are posted on our photo website http://lightsphotos.ifp3.com.
The 14-1 team is in the Gold Championship Bracket today. If they win 1 match they medal, if they win the 2nd match they are in the finals. Their first match was against KC Extreme. The 14's pretty easily handled them in set 1, winning 25-20. In set 2 they had a huge lead but let KC Extreme come back to almost tie it up at 22 or 23. But then we got back on track and finished the match by defeating them 25-23. By winning this match the 14-1 team is assured of at least a Bronze medal and 3rd place. The semi final match was against a team from Hawaii. We started out badly, going down 1-7. But then we got rolling and with Libby serving we racked up the points to about 18-7. They the Hawaians got the ball back and they ran a string of serves to bring the score back to about 18-16. We finally got the ball back again and finished out the game 25-19. The second set started out with us scoring right away. The game went back and forth with each team matching the others score until about 18. At that point the Hawaii team took over and ending up scoring most of the rest of the points to win 25-20. This set up the deciding set to determine who was going to the finals. Unfortunately it didn't turn out well for Northern Lights. The Hawaiians took control of the game right from the start and before we knew it the set was over 3-15 and the 14-1 team was done with their tournament. They officially took 3rd place. The awards ceremony followed the finals match (which Hawaii won) and the 14-1's got their bronze medals. This was the 6th team that we have medaled in the year end National Championships in Orlando and Reno! The 14-1 team concluded their day by having Curt take them out for dinner and then they came back and had a special desert called a hamburger....you can ask the girls about it.
The 15-1's started their day off this afternoon by playing Sunshine 15-1 from California. The 15-1's pretty easily handled them and won in two straight sets. Their next match was against So Cal. They also won the first set easily, but the second set was much harder with NL winning 29-27. The final match of the day was against A5 15-1's. This team was a good team, but the 15-1's pretty much controlled the match the entire time even though the scores were 25-22, 25-22. They are now 5-1 in the pool and will play TAV the only undefeated team on Monday afternoon. Right now the 15-1 team will end up either 1st, 2nd or 3rd in the pool which means they will be playing at least one challenge match Monday evening to get into the Gold Championship bracket.