Nationals - Day 2

This morning the boys enjoyed some free time at the hotel, while coaches P&T went to the convention center to watch MVP18 play in their single elimination round of Flight 1. Samuel, Ricci and Philippe woke up early to go cheer for the 18s. Unfortunately MVP18 lost to the Puerto Rican and finished 26 out of 36 teams. Not a good finish for this normally high-achieving team. However Samuel noted that this could be a good thing, if MVP15 could finish higher than his brothers' team, then he would be pretty happy. :-) After the 18s lost, we were able to watch Bryan play, then a little bit of Jason's match.

For lunch we caravaned to Driftwood, a city 30 minutes from Austin, to a place called Salt Lick BBQ. Coach Thanh found this restaurant from doing research on the web, and the 17s (who have our John) are heading there right from the airport for lunch. So of course MVP15 "had" to go there too so we could meet up with John. :-)

Here is a picture of us meeting up with John and the 17s at the Salt Lick restaurant. Good thing the weather was gorgeous, and the people friendly, because the wait was an hour long!

Finally we got our food. The boys were famished, and the food out of this world, so lunch, which started so late, ended very quickly.

We finally got to the convention center to begin Day 2 of Nationals. We were in a 5-team pool (again!) In our pool were HPSTL Navy (who beat us on Day 1), High Flyers, High Intensity (who beat us at East Coast), and Adversity Elite.

The boys played awesome, and we went undefeated and came in first in our pool today! It must be the extra yummy BBQ lunch! The team blocked incredibly, passed impeccably, served with little error, and hit well. To Samuel's mom: Samuel would like you to ask him about the match-winning kill he had today.

All this made Coach Phil wonder if we should go to Salt Lick again tomorrow...

We ended really late tonight. Thanks to the parents and our chaperone, the team got dinner picked up and served at the hotel so the players could shower and rest for another day tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will be in a pool of 4 teams. First place from this pool goes to Silver, second place goes to Bronze, third place goes to Flight 1, and last place goes to Flight 2.