AVP New Orleans Recap

Another weekend, another tournament in the books. New Orleans was a fun and interesting place to see and I would love to play another event here sometime!

First and foremost a huge shout out to Shawn Ledig and Coconut Beach for hostimg an AVP next gold series event. This event was well planned and ran spectacularly. Rain, on and off again wind, and terrifying lightning pursed throughout the course of Saturday and Sunday. Yet somehow 73 women's teams and 69 men's teams and a winner was declared by the end of Sunday.

This tournament I ran with my guy Nate Yang, founder of Flourish Beach. Without diving straight into everything that happened during the event I wanted to take a moment to notice the growth from my partner Nate Yang.

My opinion of Nate has changed significantly over these past two years. Initially, I had pinned him as the typical Cali-Clicky Beach Bro. Someone who was there to help himself and get his. That is not who Nate Yang is today.

Nate and Flourish Beach stands for something more than volleyball. Nate has developed a community of high energy, love, compassion, and professionalism that is exponentially growing beach volleyball in Denver. Two years ago, Denver was not a place on the map for beach volleyball. Now I believe Denver has become THE BEST place in the country to train beach volleyball, especially at the youth level. Nate will give you the shirt off his back if that's what you need to succeed. He cares about growing the community and worries about what he gets out of it later. This tournament displayed a massive shift in his mindset, totally professional and here to win.

Diving into the weekend. We ended up getting 5th place, seeded 16th overall. So all and all we beat our seed, won money, and gained ranking points as a team, can't complain about that. Losing in a tournament always stings and leaving you wanting more.

The biggest areas we grew in this weekend was focusing on the now. Having that point to point mentality really boosts the teams ability to generate points. In the end scoring points is all that matters in a match. We created an inside joke, quoting The Rock saying "IT DOESN'T MATTER" for things that were irrelevant to scoring any given point. While it sounds ridiculous, it worked. There was no bickering, bitching, or complaining about any given situation. We knew the other guy was giving it his best. The focus was on how to get that next point. Nate really controlled most of that and I went along with it. It was totally defeating to other teams when they tried to go on runs and we would just do what ever was required to win that point.

Our last match of the day, which we lost in three sets, left us feeling like there is so much more we can improve on. While we did not error ourselves out like a lot of tournaments, we did not manipulate the game in our favor. We played a not to lose kind of game, the late Kobe Bryant would be disappointed. We won the first set just based on the fact the opponent made an astronomical amount of errors and just figured that would win the match for us, boy we were wrong.

To say this mistake won't happen again is foolish, but its burning hot it my mind. Nate and I are playing Waupaca in July and its going to be a fun battle. My next tournament is the King of the Mountain in Vail, Colorado with Nate Adams in two weeks.

Watch our last match on Youtube.

I do want to leave a special shout out to Nick Reasons for hosting the guys. We were not the tidiest people in the world and we greatly appreciate your hospitality.