For the Love of the Game

I should have been asleep. It was 4AM on a Saturday morning after all. True, I get up at 4AM on any other weekday, but this was the weekend. A Saturday no less! I should have been asleep.

Instead, I was rolling out of bed taking a quick shower and shoveling some Honey Nut Cheerios in my mouth before we got on the road to pick up our niece for a day of volleyball down in Pontiac, MI.

I mentioned in the post on my @bozz.sports account that this trip was on the agenda. With my brother and sister in law down in Mexico on a trip that he won through his work, They were concerned about their daughter driving down to Pontiac, MI alone. That passed the baton to @mrsbozz and I to get her where she needed to go. I didn't really mind since I like watching volleyball, but dang was it early!

Pontiac sits on the outer edge of Detroit, MI proper and though I wouldn't consider it dangerous, as someone who used to spend quite a bit of time down there, it definitely has some rough areas. Thankfully, our niece had her games in the morning slot, so that got us in and out fairly quickly despite the early start.

We found ourselves at the UWM (United Wholesale Mortgage) Sports Complex which I tagged on Pinmapple. It was quite an impressive facility, not only did they have volleyball happening through the day, but they also had pickleball and soccer being played. In fact, according to the all knowing Internet, the UWM Sports complex is "one of the largest fully enclosed full-size association football arenas in the US". Pretty impressive for Pontiac, MI!

The facility even has a full cafe with a grill and Starbucks. There were also a couple vendor areas where outside businesses could set up. For instance, we bought some really yummy cookies from a local baker. I took the photo above because I thought it was funny they would spend the money to put in a railing when there is a wall right on the other side of it.

The only thing I can guess is that it used to be an open space and they later decided to drywall it in. Thus the railing was necessary before, but not now.

One of the things I really liked about this facility was the fact that they didn't try to cram too much into a single area. they only had about eight courts in total being used for the volleyball games. With the past travel team that my niece played on, we used to have to travel into downtown Detroit and go to a facility where there were literally hundreds of courts set up and being used nonstop. It was mass chaos.

Don't get me wrong, this place got busy, but nowhere near what we had come to expect from her tournaments.

Her team had their first game at 8 AM in the morning and they had to be on the court ready to go by 7:30 AM, hence the early start for us since we had to drive to the next town over to pick her up, then the hour and a half down to Pontiac. The team had a total of three matches on the schedule for the day with each match consisting of two to three games.

I say two to three games because the first two games are played to 25 points. The first team to that score wins the game. I'm not sure if they have to be up by at least two points or not. That didn't seem to be an issue with this team. If after the first two games they have a split decision, they then play a third game to 15.

Thankfully, my nieces team swept the whole day and they never had to play a third game. The fact that they were able to dispatch their opponents so quickly meant that things moved pretty quickly through the day and by the time it hit 1 PM which was when their last match was supposed to start, they were already almost done with their third match.

Which was a good thing because we were trying to get home before a fairly large snow storm pushed through. We were about 15 minutes away from home when the snow started falling.

Despite the early start, it was a really awesome way to spend the day. This team is so much better than her last travel team. You can tell the other girls are taking it seriously and they really care about the team, the sport, and how they perform. As I said, they basically dominated the day. @mrsbozz was telling me that they did pretty much the same thing at their last tournament as well.

You probably won't be surprised to hear that I took about a million photos, but this is all I am going to share with you today. There were some really amazing rallies and some pretty awesome spikes. Our niece plays more of a support roll on the back part of the court. She is the shortest person on her team, but she can cover a lot of area and she has a really solid bump to set the other players up. I'm really proud of her and how well she has progressed in her volleyball career.

We also got to spend a bit of time just chatting with her which is kind of a rare thing given she is a busy teenage girl. She is such an amazing and bright young lady, I can't wait to see what the future holds for her!

This was a Saturday well worth rolling out of bed for!

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