Mission Accomplished: SuperPowerBottoms win gold, Rise of the Spartans V-ball Tourney

April 3, 2009 by vongsundara 

SuperPowerBottoms at Rise of the Spartans Volleyball Tournament

SuperPowerBottoms at Rise of the Spartans Volleyball Tournament

It’s been a week, and I’m still on a high after the SuperPowerBottoms won gold at TSVL’s Rise of the Spartans volleyball tournament. Winning gold in the lowest pool was definitely one of my big goals for the year after this team was put together last fall, but to actually accomplish the goal feels so much better than I could have imagined. The most amazing part is that no one on our entire team played competitive volleyball last year. We came in as rookie team, and I came on as a rookie captain, and somehow we came together in time to accomplish our goal.

We played the tournament in Mississauga, which was a nice change of pace. The great thing about the facility is that it had enough courts to accommodate the entire tournament, meaning we wouldn’t be spread out across the city of Toronto.

I’m really proud of how the entire team played on the last day. We ironed out a lot of the kinks in our game from the first day. We came into the second day as the top seed in the lowest pool of the tournament. It was a different feeling for us, and I had to make sure the team stopped thinking of ourselves as underdogs and start dealing with the pressure of being the favourite and living up to our seeding. We started out playing the lowest seed, a team that had given us all heaps of trouble the day before. It was great that we kept our intensity up and put the team away quickly and conserving our energy.

Our second match was against I’d Hit That Flamer, which was a combo team made up of members of I’d Hit That and Flamers, two teams that are ranked in higher pools than SuperPowerBottoms during TSVL (Toronto Spartan Volleyball League) weekly league play. The match was ridiculously close, and we were able to squeak out a hard-fought victory.

From the loser’s bracket, Boom (also ranked higher than us in weekly league play) escaped with a narrow victory over Botox, the team we beat at the start of the day. The scare seemed to kick Boom into gear as they also beat I’d Hit That Flamer in three close sets to face us in the finals. Since it was double elimination and we had yet to lose, Boom had to beat us twice to win. Unfortunately for us, they managed to beat us the first two sets, so it all came down to a final winner-take-all set to decide who would be going home with the gold medal.

I will remember this final set for a long time to come. The first major turning point was when our middle blocker, FarmerSutra, went up and won a two-on-one jump ball. That was the first sign to me that we wanted it more, and the play definitely helped to discourage our opponents. The final set ended up being extremely scrappy, as both teams played it safe and there were very few errors. We were having difficulty finishing points as our best hitter, WideReceiver, sat out the final set (due to set rotations), and I don’t think I had a solid hit the entire set, so it all came down to defence.

The moment I will remember forever is the 22-20 point (Boom was ahead and serving). We had taken our final timeout shortly before, and we came out of the timeout doing our pattented SuperPowerBottom circle jump as a final way to show unity and focus us for our final push. The point went back and forth for a while before Boom pushed the ball into the chest of our back middle player, Stretch.

The ball bounced about a foot from where it hit our player’s chest, and I was at least half the court away. Given the score, I just had it in my mind to not let anything drop to the ground. Once I saw the ball bounce on his chest, time almost stood still as I dashed across the court in three galloping strides. I dove and barely got my outstretched knuckle on the tip of the ball. Somehow, some way, the ball shot straight up and we went on to win the point and then the match.

Now, I’m not usually one to brag about my play, but that was the dive of my life. Even the linesman looked in shock at the play given the importance of the point.

I’m amazed at how much SuperPowerBottoms has matured in the last few months. Next week we have a tournament in Montreal, which is more of a fun excursion, and we end the year with a league-wide playoff. We have a lot of work to do, and we’ll have to play even better to have a shot at the playoffs, but I’m confident that SuperPowerBottoms will rise to the occasion.

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2 Responses to “Mission Accomplished: SuperPowerBottoms win gold, Rise of the Spartans V-ball Tourney”

  1. ed on April 3rd, 2009 8:48 PM

    congrats!! OMG… what great material for your comedy routine… just the team and player names alone…lol…

  2. vongsundara on April 5th, 2009 2:00 PM

    Haha, yeah it's definitely a great group of guys to play with and a great source of material for my act. I can't wait to debut my full SuperPowerBottoms comedy set. I think I have enough material for almost 20 minutes.

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