The Setup & Plan
The setup & plan are pretty much the same. We have a volleyball tournament weekend in Atlantic City. The plan is to go there, watch volleyball, then go home. There’s not much more than that, though I suppose if we get a good meal that will be a bonus.
Zwift Start
I start the day early with a Zwift ride. This will be my exercise for the weekend so I knock it out when I can. Judging by the image below, I was watching Tehran on Apple+.
The Drive
It is a rainy Saturday so it turns out that we would not have done anything outside anyway. It rains, then rains some more. Frankly it is a miserable day to be outside, so it works out well that we’re inside.
Pho Sydney
D finds a place to hit for lunch, which we do after we drop off Zac. The clientele is mostly Asian so it seems legit, and after getting our food I can say that’s the case. We don’t typically do Vietnamese but after this, I may need to change that. Very solid bowl of pho, and if I ever go back to the dump that is AC, I may very well end up here.
Harrah’s Day 1
We get to the hotel in plenty of time but they won’t let us in our room at 2:00, so we end up checking the bags and going to watch the first game. They lose. The coach & the captain have a total meltdown, and it pretty much destroys the morale of all the kids. It is a pretty poor start to the weekend. Both matches were close, something like 25-22 and 25-23, but in the end they are 0-2.
After the first game we go get the room and bring our stuff up.
A few hours later they lose game 2 of the day, then game 3. The second game they at least won a match. But the last game they got pretty solidly beaten. Overall they go 0-3 on the Saturday.
We go back to the room for a little, then Zac goes out with his friends and we find dinner for ourselves.
AC Burger Company
I put this here for historical purposes only. The food was lackluster at best. I got a cobb salad, which I guess was a mistake. There is definitely an adage about When in Rome and I did not follow it here. I really should have just gotten a cheeseburger. This was fairly terrible but I blame myself.
After dinner we hang out in the room and call it a day.
Day 2
I wake up and go grab breakfast, which ends up being $52 for all 3 of us. Welcome to AC! That said, the breakfast sandwich and muffin are good enough, much better than the dinner from last night.
The Games
The first round is a slaughter, which we knew it would be. But that’s ok. One of the Warren Six Pack teams does away with Core in short order, and we are off to the loser’s bracket which is where we knew the day would end up.
Game 5 of the weekend is a much more even affair. It goes 3 sets and Core manages to pull off the win. They move on to the championship of the lower loser bracket, which is maybe the bronze bracket. There they face the Eva team that they beat 2 weeks ago for the overall win at the single day tournament. Just as we saw that day, they went 3 sets and beat them something like 15-13 in the final set. 2 weeks ago they won the final set 19-17, or so.
It was a really good way to end a really tough weekend. The first 4 games were rough, though they easily could have won the first 2. Winning the last 2 and beating the same team from 2 weeks ago shows them they’re still able to hang. And being able to say you won something is always a positive.
The pics from the weekend can be found here.
The Drive Home
We hit the road at 8:30 and get home at 10:30. It is so late we don’t get the dog nor do we bring Zac to his dad’s. We just head home, eat a really late dinner, and go to bed.
Summary
Well, there were some rough spots but it could have been worse. I don’t love AC but I understand that it’s an easy venue. We probably won’t need to go back until next year, and when we do, I think we’ll know a bit more how to navigate it better.
As for the team, Zac said he had a really good weekend (maybe not great) and he has a good friend on the team. I think they are all lacking a bit in cohesion but it’s early in the season. Hopefully things work out but as far as the coach & captain are concerned, that bridge may be hard to mend. We shall see.
Traveling Normandy 