A Few Weeks On The Road

It has been awhile since I last wrote and so much has happened. We had tournaments in Charleston, Louisville, and Atlanta. We are a day away from the Hermosa Event. I will go through the highlights to catch you up to speed.

Charleston - What a beautiful city! The tournament is held at the Family Circle Tennis Center. I love playing there because we are spoiled with really nice facilities. There is a players' lounge with couches, television, showers and real bathrooms as opposed to a tent and port-a-potties that we usually have at tournaments.

Besides the nice facilities, the landscape is gorgeous. There are tons of trees and green grass and the air is so fresh.

I am not going to go into much detail about the tournament because if I do, this posting would be way too long to read. I am only going to write about the highlights.

We lost a close match to Boss/Ross in the third round. We played pretty well parts of the match, but could not close it. After that match, we did not play well the rest of our tournament and finished 7th place.

After Charleston, we had two weeks off. We took a few days and went on a mini-vacation. We worked hard all of January, February, March, and April so a few days off was much needed. I ignored all of my dietary restrictions and really enjoyed myself. It took me a few days to detox my body from the sugar, wine, and heavy foods, but it was well worth it!

Our next trip was to Louisville. Jeremy traveled with me on this trip. While the volleyball part of the trip did not go so well, we had a fantastic weekend with some new friends that we met. That is the wonderful thing about beach volleyball. We travel all over the country and get the chance to meet some really wonderful people. On this occasion, we met Mr. Paul Perconti. We stayed at his residence while in Louisville. We shared some wonderful meals with him and some other new friends. It was really enjoyable and made up for the disappointment of a 9th place finish.

After Louisville, I drove straight to Atlanta with John Hyden and Brad Keenan. We arrived on Tuesday evening. I got in a workout at the gym along with a few practices in the sand. I also did some promos for Cuervo. We got into a wreck coming home from our last promo. Thankfully it was not serious and no one got hurt. The poor Cuervo Escalade got its front bumper torn off and the other van had a few dents in it, but that was the extent of the wreck.

The next day, we played one match against Lewis/Lima. We lost in three games and were very disappointed, angry, frustrated, and generally pissed off! We were in a rut of poor play and did not break it there. We had all night to stew in it. We came out the next day on a war-path. We got better and better as the day went on. We won our three matches and felt much better about our play. The next morning, we faced DeNechochea/Fontana. We played really well and won in two games. The win put us into the semi-finals.

Our next match where the winner would go to the final, we faced Jordan/Davis. We all fought so hard in this match. We split the first two games. In the third, we were tied at 10-10 when they pulled away. It was disappointing to be that close and not be able to finish it, but at the same time, it was encouraging because we were so close.

Overall, I am extremely pleased that we fought our way back from our first round loss. We turned what could have been a disasterous weekend into a very successful one. We still have so much to improve on, but it was a good confidence boost. Besides, we want to be peaking around Manhattan Beach time! That is the big one for us!

Tomorrow is the first day of Hermosa. It is a two day tournament for the women so we will get in more matches than normal.

I am pleased to announce a new sponsorship! PNY joins the AVP and is also sponsoring me and Holly for the season. PNY is a leading manufacturer and supplier of memory upgrade modules, high capacity flash memory cards, USB flash drives, portable hard drives as well as consumer and professional workstation graphics cards. The company's photography, mobility, 3D gaming and business solutions are widely available from major retail, e-tail and wholesale outlets internationally.

I again want to thank Real Water, Cuervo, and PNY for all their support! These wonderful companies make living my dream a realistic and successful adventure!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

All my best,

Angie