Episode LXXIX: "Nationals"

Now that the season is over, here is a post about our KU club volleyball team.

First of all, after only two tournaments in our history of being a club, we were ranked 20^th in the nation. How about that! I certainly don’t think we deserved it, but it still felt kind of nice.

Also, here’s a picture of me jump-serving during our second tournament. It almost looks like I know what I’m doing!

Now let me tell you about “Nationals.” This is where qualifying club teams from all across the nation meet to duke it out and crown a champion. This year the tournament was in Dallas, TX. Our team got together with the KU women’s team, and with Nebraska’s two teams, and we all rented a charter bus, which is quite a way to travel, I say. When you want, you can look down upon the rolling hills and fields and enjoy near-panoramic views, and when you’re tired of that you can watch any of the 3,000 movies brought along for the trip.

Everyone at the tournament stayed at the Dallas Sheraton (we’re talking like 500 total players,) which made for one hectic hotel. The Sheraton was about 35-40 stories tall, and the elevators were so fast that our ears popped every time we came down to the lobby.

The tournament was held at the Dallas Convention center, where they converted one of the large rooms into a giant gym, with a total of 17 courts playing simultaneously. Imagine all the whistle noises!

Now here’s the bad news. Somebody at the KU registrar’s office reported to the volleyball officiating body that I was neither a full-time nor a half-time student at KU. This was false. Our club president should have caught this before we left. I also should have caught this. Also, the guy who gets paid to ensure KU club sports teams’ success should have caught this. Unfortunately, nobody caught this until the refs in Game 1 at Dallas, TX. Long story short, the KU registrar apparently is full of lazy, incompetent (and clearly overpaid) workers who are unable to (or refuse to) perform simple arithmetic. They failed to rectify the situation, and I was left sitting on the bench all week.

Which meant that I was on VACATION!

I lounged about at the pool, ate some Texas BBQ, went to the Dallas Museum of Art, which is really nice, and has one of my new favorite paintings by one of my favorite artists. I ate at the restaurant of “celebrity chef” Stephan Pyles, and had the most delicious ceviche I’ve ever tasted. I also hung out with some of these Texas Longhorns; there’s probably 20-30 of them just standing there in the middle of Downtown Dallas.

One additional thing they were doing at the tournament was teaching people to play “sitting volleyball,” the official Paralympics version of volleyball. I did get to play a game of this, and I daresay I was pretty good.

In conclusion: I didn’t get to play, and the team didn’t do as well as it should have, but I still had quite a bit of fun and am still glad I went.