Regionals Part 1

            Regionals. A bid to nationals is on the line and you are playing close to home. A lot of tough competition and only 2 teams get their ticket to nationals. Playing in your home state means playing in front of family and friends, which might be added pressure for some girls. Regionals can be fun and stressful at the same time. My experience at regionals this year was awesome.

            This year regionals was in Cedar Falls, which is about an hour away from my house and it is also where my team practices. So it felt kind of weird waking up in my own bed on the day of a national qualifier. Usually we are 5-15 hours away. Driving to Cedar Falls on that Saturday morning I had all kinds of emotions running through me. I was more nervous than usual and I think was because I knew that that was our best bet at qualifying. In the back of my head I was thinking about last season and what went down at regionals then. Last year we were put in a tough pool the first day and ended up getting 3rd in our pool and playing in the bronze bracket on Sunday. It just wasn't a good weekend for my team, but we are a whole different team this year and I knew we could do it. I just had this feeling. I wanted that bid so bad for so long I was going to do whatever it took to get it.

            On Saturday we were put in a pretty easy pool and won all 3 of our games in 2 sets. Sunday was going to be the real test of what my team could accomplish. I was pumped and I couldn't wait to go get that bid. On Sunday our first game wasn't until 10:00 so we got to sleep in a little but and that is always good. We played Rockets 17 Black in the quarterfinals, which was our first game. In the first set we started off kind of shaky but we fought back and didn't look back from there. We won in 2 sets and now faced CIS (Central Iowa Select) in the semi-finals, and the game to get a bid. The time was finally here, playing for the bid. We were so close I could taste it. We knew this game was going to be a battle, but we were up for it and we wanted revenge because we lost to them in pool play last year. I knew a couple girls from their team from High Performance and playing them in school season and they were a very talented team. We were going to have to play our best and not let up if we wanted to beat them.

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