A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

Once again I took part in the Farmers’ Days competitive co-ed volleyball tournament this past weekend in Wilkie. The tournament has been going on for about a decade and a half, and I’ve been competing in it for about the last ten years. It is definitely getting harder on my body as the years pass by. I remember being part of one of the youngest teams in the tournament. As the years went by, the older teams started to drop off. I never really thought about it until this year, and it suddenly dawned on me that all of the other teams were getting younger and younger. And all of a sudden, I was on one of those older teams. Geeze. Time sure flies by. Note: three of the ladies on our team were under 24 and helped keep the average age of our team WAY down.

Anyway, this was the first year that we didn’t have to scramble for team members. Our team was assembled early, and consisted of Jason “Mr. Fundamental” Fenrich, Travis “The Drunken Master” Weber, Cheryl “Little Engine” Fenrich, Domini “The Dominator” Zeigler, and “The Shepherd Connection” - Laura and Sarah Shepherd. Oh yeah, and there was me, Hemant “The Wall” Naidu. Our team name was The Toronto Raptors, in homage to the basketball team’s great play this season (can you guess who organized the team’s entry this year?). You can watch a video demonstrating some fundamental volleyball below.

As always, the schedule was fierce and without mercy. We played 6 matches (2 game total point) on Saturday. The top six teams were seeded for Sunday’s playoffs, based on their Saturday record. We were pretty sure we didn’t make the playoffs, and we (or at least I) were pretty content with that. I was extremely stiff and could barely walk. It really is not a good idea to play volleyball only once a year, especially in a competitive tournament. It hurts too much.

Not being in the playoffs would be somewhat of a relief because Farmers’ Days is also known for its great cabaret at the town civic centre. To everyone’s delight Wilkie’s legendary band, Danny and the Dusters, was playing. After dinner and getting cleaned up, our posse rolled into the hall with our regular swagger. It didn’t take long to run into the volleyball tournament organizer who was happy to inform us that we squeaked into the sixth and final spot of the playoffs. Gee. Great. Our game was at 10 am.

The dance was fun as usual, and Danny and the Dusters played their rendition of Authority Song to perfection, disappointing no one. I took it easy that night, considering I was pretty wiped from the days activities, plus I didn’t want to be a total puddle on the court in the morning. I was home and in bed by 3 am, but I do know that some members of our team were up until around 6 am.

I made sure I was at the gym nice and early to get stretched out, since I was still having trouble walking. The rest of my team showed up and once we started warming up, I loosened up pretty quickly. Our playoff game was against the tournament organizer’s team, and we were fairly evenly matched. The game was extremely close, but we ended up losing, and being eliminated from the tournament.

This ended up being our most successful run in the Farmers’ Days Volleyball Tournament. We usually are completely terrible, but this year we had a fairly decent team. Another good thing was that this year’s teams were somewhat evenly matched. There were two or three teams that were incredible (that’s what happens when you have Husky players on teams), but they knew when to take it easy.

So until next year’s tournament, take a moment to check out some pictures. I put my cameras in the trusty hands of Curtis and Nikki to take some action shots during some of our games. You can see them here.