Today felt a lot busier - I had a doubles game at 10am and a singles game at 4pm (plus our team had games at most other times).
The doubles game at 10am was against a very strong Oregon State team. They just had much better individual skills than us. One girl was weaker than the other, but even she was still better than us. Jordan had trouble handling the left-side serves, and I was getting but not killing the right-side serves. We switched from playing front and back to playing diagonals for the second set, and that seemed to help some. We ended up losing 15-1, 15-5.
Since we lost, I had to referee right after our game. I ended up refereeing a men's #6 match between a University of Florida guy and a Baldwin Wallace guy. I was nervous, but it went reasonably well. I just feel like I'm a useless referee because I can never tell of the ball skipped or not (and that's the main use of a referee). Jordan stood with me for most of the game to provide moral support (and a second set of eyes).
After refereeing I changed and then watched some games. I eventually went to relax some until it was time to get ready for my singles game.
My singles game was against a friendly girl from the University of California Berkeley. I played better in this game, and she was generally worse than me, so I marched to a 15-6, 15-8 win. She made some good shots, and kept the score close at the beginning of both sets. However, she seemed to be very tired at the end, which probably hurt her (although she still made good shots even in long rallies). I'm proud of how I played, especially at the end of the game.
After my win I stretched, watched some other games, and then changed into dry clothing. We realized soon after my game that Taquito, our good luck gnome, had gone missing. We searched for him, and had the tournament desk make some announcements about him, but we had no luck in finding him. Perhaps a team has stolen him and will return him at the end of the tournament?
We left the gym around 8:30pm, went to the hotel to shower and/or change, and them took the hotel shuttle (in two trips) to our team dinner at Gordon Biersch. The food was delicious, although the garlic fries were by far my favorite. I had the Gorgonzola chicken with mashed potatoes and asparagus for dinner and the brownie with ice cream for dessert.
Katie from Texas A&M picked us up from the restaurant and took about half of us back to our hotel and the other half back to the Texas A&M hotel to chill. I was really tired, so I just went back to the hotel. But it was really nice of her to pick us up!
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