All of the pictures taken this year are posted on our photo website http://lightsphotos.ifp3.com.
The 17-1's were in the Gold Championship bracket today. They are the third Northern Lights team to be in the Gold Championship Bracket at this tournament out of a possible 3 teams so far. (2 more are still playing.) The 17-1's started their day on the Championship court playing San Francisco Jrs in the round of 8 teams. This was a big match, because the winner moves into the semi finals and medals. NL pretty easily handled San Francisco Jrs even though the 2nd set got a little exciting towards the end and finished 27-25. This assured the team of at least a 3rd place finish and a Bronze medal. Their next match was the semi finals and it was against TAV 17-2's. NL 171 wanted to be in the finals so badly that they pretty much crushed TAV 17-2's in two quick sets. This put the 17-1's in the Finals against Michigan Elite. This was our 5th team in a finals competition in the year end National Tournaments. Unfortunately like the other 4 finals, we were denied a Gold medal by a very good Michigan Elite team....in fact they pretty much thumped us in two quick sets. This left the 17-1's with a 2nd place finish in the 17 National Division. All American Awards were given to Lisa Atkinson, Katie Habeck, and Taylor Voss. After the awards ceremony the team went out for its traditional Medaling dinner with Curt at Outback. They then came back went swimming, cleaned up and were treated to unique desert served at this hotel called a "Hamburger". The girls loved it. This was a super way to end a fun season.
161 played in the morning today and needed to win at least 2 of the 3 matches today to stay in the hunt for the Gold. They managed to do that by going 2-1 today. They started off by beating Coast 16-1 from Southern California in two quick sets. Their second match was against Sunshine also from Southern California and the 16-1's defeated them in two straight sets without any major problems. Their 3rd match of the day was against Team VB Rags from Puerto Rico. This was a much harder match and the 16-1's lost it in 2 sets. This puts them at 4-2 in this pool with one more match to go on Friday morning. If they win the match they will be second in the pool, if they lose the match it will come down to game % to see who advances.
162 played their last two matches in their initial pool today. Due to the timing of the matches I was unable to see them or take any pictures of them because I was with the 171 team. However according to Andy they played very well today and they won both matches. The second match they went 3 sets with, but pretty much crushed the team in the 3rd set. There was a slim chance for them to advance toward the gold, but another team had to win a match that they didn't so the 16-2's ended up 4th in the pool. They are no longer in contention for the Gold Bracket and will now be playing for 25th place over the next two days. After they finished play today they went out to a movie because they won't be playing until Friday afternoon again.