Bragging Rights

This past Saturday, Matt did what Matt does best...organizing an activity. We hosted a ping pong tournament at our house. We had 3 ping pong tables (our 4th table backed out last minute) and 16 serious players all ready to battle it out for the top spot. It was a double elimination where the winner of the winner's bracket plays the winner of the loser's bracket for first and second place.

I was one of two girls in the tournament, so I was very nervous. I won my first match and faced Matt's uncle for the second match. Matt has difficulty beating him and the one time I've ever played him before, I lost. Matt's uncle smoked me the first game (we play best of 3), and I think no one was as surprised as I was when I won the next two games sealing another victory.

My 3rd match was against my older brother, Jared, who taught me everything I know about ping pong, including my serve which is the best thing I have going for me. I knew that I would be heading down to the loser's bracket at this point. But I seemed to be on fire as no one could return my serve. I beat him in two games, although on any other day this probably wouldn't happen again.

I ended up the winner of the winner's bracket...the only player who hadn't lost a game. When I faced the winner of the loser's bracket, however, my victory streak ended. He had this one serve with a very tricky spin that I had difficulty getting back to him, and he was the first player all day that didn't have trouble with my serve so that eliminated my greatest strength. The only game that my opponent had lost (putting him in the loser's bracket) was to my older brother though, whom I beat, so it worked out kind of funny.

Anyway, not much interest to those who don't play ping pong, but I was on a high all day yesterday because I got second place out of 16 very good players. Matt did pretty well, I never had to face him obviously, but he said his game was having an off day. He did a good job organizing it all and making sure it all ran smoothly. It was a fun morning!