Colorado Crossroads

This volleyball season has brought a lot of exciting adventures such as COLORADO!! My friend, Audrey, her dad, my dad and I left on Friday morning for our Denver, Colorado tournament, the Colorado Crossroads.

At the beginning of break I had done nothing exciting because I was preparing for our first out of state tournament of the season. The team I'm on this year will go to two or three this year depending on how well we do. 
The drive down there was pretty boring and the best way to pass time is listening to music and count firework signs. If you've even driven to Denver you know how many firework signs you will pass. I only started counting after I had already seen a couple but I ended up with about nine signs. Nine. That's a lot.

SO CROWDED!

The first night I was there I felt really uncomfortable and I didn't really know why. It was really dark outside and I had never been to Denver before so I wasn't quite sure where I was. On our way to dinner we got lost and ended up driving for about an hour when the restaurant was only 20 minutes away. Once we got back to the hotel and went to sleep I felt much better! :) Our first game wasn't until about 3 on Saturday so my team and I ran around the hotel bothering our coach.

We just ate breakfast in the hotel but it was so gross. They only served omelets and muffins. Last year, at the Far Westerns Qualifier tournoment in Reno, I ate eggs and got food poisoning so I quickly opted out of the omelets. The muffins were not very appetizing either. I had to convince myself that there were nuts in the blubbery muffins because they tasted crunchy for some reason.
My team loves Chick-fil-A so we had lunch there, then went to the convention center in downtown Denver. After the second day, We went to Olive Garden and I can't stand Olive Garden. I've only been there twice and they were both at tournaments. I ordered the same thing as one of my teammates so I could make sure I wouldn't get sick but with just my luck I got food poisoning again. I was staying in the hotel throwing up for the rest of the night.


The actual tournament-
I had know idea what the convention center would look so you could say I was impressed. Most facilities we play in are usually just very big gyms with lost of courts and that's about it. Walking into this one was very different. First of all, it was HUGE. I'm surprised we actually found our court. Just imagine being surrounded by about 3,000 screaming girls and over 70 courts, and not to mention they're all tall. This isn't including all the girls tall parents either. I wasn't just surrounded by people though. Walking into the gym, Gatorade gave every player energy chews and leaving protein shakes. All around were vendors selling socks, t-shirts, sweatshirts, thousands of headbands, face wash, bathing suits, etc and even CARS! 

We ended up by doing very well the first day. My team broke pool (which just means we won all of our games during pool play). The second day of playing we won our first game then lost the last three. On the last day, We were put into an average pool. The first game in the set we lost, the second we won, then we lost the third. Since it was a single elimination day, we went home that morning. My team got 55th place which actually isn't too bad because it was a national tournament.
If you want to see what the other teams at the tournament places, look at the results.

The entrance to the convention center we played at.

We were in Colorado the week that the snow hit hard so we from a hot sweaty gym to a snow storm. At first it felt nice but then my toes were numb because I forgot my boots!