January Jam Volleyball Tournament

Sophie's volleyball team has been together for a few years now and I may have mentioned it, but her coach moved them from recreational to competitive play. They joined a club back in the fall & have been playing in a rec league in the fall & winter to get them ready for tournament season, which started last weekend. The girls participated in the January Jam, which was a one-day tournament here in the DFW area. We left the house at 7:00 that morning with no idea what we were walking in to because this was our first volley tournament ever, but these girls were excited:

We took a team pic when we got there & I kept trying to lower Sophie's expectations because 12U was the lowest level & they are 11U. There were 16 teams & they were definitely the youngest. I believe there was another 11U team there, but we never played them. The tournament started with 4 pool games - you had to play 3 & then 1 the girls had to ref & run the score table:

The pool games consisted of 2 sets each & at the end it came down to the most won sets & if there was a tie, it came down to point differential. Surprisingly, our girls did AMAZING & won 5 out of 6 sets during their pool games. We were shocked! I honestly thought they wouldn't make it much past the pool games but instead they came in first & moved to the gold bracket:

Sadie had a soccer tournament & she was bouncing back & forth between DNow at our church, so he was with her while I was by myself, but she did have one extra fan pop in to surprise her that afternoon:

After pool play, they had regular matches, which are the best 2 out of 3 sets. They played better than we ever imagined & before we knew it, the girls were playing in the championship game! They ended up losing but they took it all the way to 3 sets & it was an exciting afternoon! Like I said, all of the teams they played were older & this was their very first tournament ever! They ended up getting 2nd place out of 16 teams. Who knew?!

We ended up not getting home until 9:00 that night so it was a really long day. In fact, I hardly left my seat in the stands except to go to the bathroom twice that day. I hate Bryan missed it because it was so fun to watch but we have several tournaments planned this spring so hopefully next time we can switch if we have a Sadie conflict. So proud of these girls & cannot wait to see how they do the rest of the season!