Do You Believe In Miracles? YESSSS!

The Live Acorn’s volleyball team had their final tournament of the Club season over the weekend, and oh, what a season it was.

To truly appreciate the team’s achievements, we have to go all the way back to before the civil war the end of the school season, when Club tryouts, teams, and locations were being announced. Much to the disbelief of the athletes and parents of two schools in particular (one of which is attended by The Live Acorn), all of the Club teams were excluding them from tryouts. Oh, except for, you know, the two really tall girls. They're okay ...

(Note: I would imagine that some of my less gullible readers might suspect that not everything I write here is fully based in reality, and I will concede that they may be correct in their suspicions. Unfortunately, in this case, I am not embellishing in the least.)

Well, obviously, this could not stand! One of the parents, in an impressive display of moxie, took the initiative, lined up a practice gym and a coach, and got them on the Club schedule. “We don’t need them!” she exclaimed. “We’ll put on our own show! Gosh, we can build a stage back in the barn, and we’ll make our own costumes! After all, what is a heart, but just a mechanical pump? And are the veins not merely tubes, and the liver but a filter?” We let her ramble on a bit, then noticed that some of the girls were getting a little frightened, so we walked her over to the bar and got her some whisky. In any case, they had a team!

Turns out they lost every game and never even scored a single point. So great was the humiliation, a majority of the young ladies are currently in counseling. The organizing parent has been forced to move out of state, her life in ruins.

Ha ha! Not really.

No, this ragtag collection of castoffs and misfits practiced their butts off, which paid off in continuous and vast improvement over the months. There were several weeks where I would have sworn that it wasn’t even the same team. (One of those weeks, I went to the wrong gym, where a 2-on-2 beach volleyball tournament was being held, so it literally wasn't the same team; that was a little more confusing than most weeks.)

Back to the final tournament: The first preliminary round took place Friday evening, and determined which teams would be in the “Gold” bracket, and which would be in the “Silver.” Three matches, three victories. Oh, I’m sorry … that’s three matches, three victories, bitchez (try to picture me moving both my head and finger back and forth as I type this, ala Phylicia Rashad), including wins over a couple of the teams from which they were "disinvited" from joining. And before you start criticizing me in the comments (did you know you can leave comments? Of my millions of readers, only about 4-5 ever do ... odd ...), let me be clear: I am not calling 14-year-old girls "bitchez" … it’s just a figure of speech meant to emphasize one’s superiority over others. Oh, and the other teams were pwned, too, whatever that means.

On Saturday, in the Gold bracket, the morning session comprised each team playing three games to determine the seeding for the single-elimination portion of the tournament. They dominated the first two, but were finally defeated by a team two years older and about a foot (.3048 meters) taller, on average. No matter … they earned a favorable seed, and looked good going forward.

Sure enough, they beat a tough team in the first match, losing the first game, but winning the second and crushing their opponents' very will to live in the tie-breaker. My god, my heart was pounding like a Zulu’s war drum the night before a missionary slaughter. The whole situation was eerily similar to the 1980 Olympic Hockey tournament. Unfortunately, the volleyball analog of Finland was a group of 16+ girls from out of town who regularly played against 18+ teams, and who beat them pretty soundly.

But in the end, they finished 4th, had a great season, lots of fun, and they walked out with their heads held high.

Boise Blaze, you ROCK.