* UPDATED with typo fix *

I am glad I went to Colorado state despite ambivalent feelings in the beginning. I failed to convince Victor, Joe, Luis, Rob, Chris … to go. I didn’t even try to convince Wil since he hasn’t even gone to Maryland yet. The turnout was great, and I really liked the double story venue. I even managed to watch a full two hour standup comedy show Sunday evening. The space where the tournament is called the Castle because they building looks like a castle from outside. I have a picture to prove it. The comedians were making fun of the fact that foosball event bested their own event at the Castle.

Friday started out really well. My focus was to not play hard and tire myself out before the games even start. My five bar and shot ( PULL if you are wondering ) was working well for me. I don’t remember losing a lot of matches on Friday. On Saturday morning, I woke up with bad shoulder ache because I don’t know how to sleep in proper form. Even with an annoying ache, I played well. I was doing well on Am singles, and I thought I could actually win it as I didn’t feel a lot of resistance. The toughest match I played was against TJ Tool. He agreed to play back for me in Am doubles so we sealed the deal. I lost to Dustin first. This was a classic loss to me. It happens when I think I have already won and somehow end up slacking a little bit to lose the game. On the losers bracket, I lost to Steve Rolling ( Kid ). Victor, Kid sends his regard to you. He says he knows you. Kid won our game by surprise. Before I could blink he had scored four from the back, three of which were crazy off the back wall shot. I recovered the game to 4-4 but lost to another 2 bar shot. He is a monster with his 2 bar.

My open doubles game with John Lee was fun. I played front and won our first match. He kept saying that my pull shot is so annoying and feels bad for the opponent. I think I scored 100 % our first match. Second match was against Tony. John started up. I blocked well, but Tony got way too many possession to eventually start scoring on will. For the second game, I moved front and passed well and scored well. We were winning 4-2. I thought to myself, we got this game. And then we lost. The third game, I lost my shot and couldn’t score so John moved up. After the match, Tony commended me on my five bar, which felt good. There was a long wait before the next game, and I had played few DYP games in between and never really recovered my shot. We ended up getting called against Jones/Aamodt. My shot was still off, and I really didn’t want to switch to snake, because I think snake shot is cheap. So, John put me in the pits. We bought realized that we can win the game easily, and then of course we lost. We had a quick laugh about it and so open doubles was over for me.

I told TJ that I am no good upfront. My pull shot is on retreat somewhere in the mountains. Turns out that switch was good for us. TJ was shooting and passing well on everyone we played for Am doubles. I blocked without moving and it frustrated a lot of opponents. We were feeling good, and we thought we can win the tournament. I quickly reminded myself that I need to drop that thought. So, we continued to win when I stopped making assumptions about winning. Eventually we ran into Mohammad Alabudullah and Mohammad Alhalawaji. They were tough. I played good defense, TJ shot well, and we managed to take the game and put them to losers bracket. Both me and TJ knew they would make it back to finals. The whole thing was not fair to begin with. When they were playing us, we were still thinking of how to say their last name. It was distraction by name. When they came back, they adjusted everything about their game and had us by the rope. I got lit up (almost like a christmas tree) but eventually recovered a decent defense for our second match. Their goalie really became alive and scored good shots from the back to bring closure to the games in the second set, just as we were beginning to control the game. Overall, many good matches and I am a little upset we couldn’t seal the win.

I got to play Pro-am with Joe P. We lost our first match to Lexy Gabriel and Brian Turman. We were happy for a while when we realized that Gabriel was not the Kane Gabriel, but his better half Lexy. But we soon found out, our momentary relief was in vain. Brian overshadowed my five. He blocked everything I tried and passed with no concern at all. I still could not shoot. I put Joe P up front, but we still lost. We were both blocking Brian somewhat well. So for both games, Lexy had to come up front to win the games. She had a pull shot that always went middle and somehow both me and Joe let her have it. Second match was against Zeke, and we made them nervous. We got to the third game. We switched back and forth. The only thing missing in the whole equation was my shot, otherwise we would have beaten them.

I had a good time playing with NICK TOENJES and WILLIAM MEYERS for my expert and pro doubles. If you both somehow read this post, thank you for putting up with me. I knew I was not in the game much. William Meyers was super motivated and fun guy to hang around with. He knew Leon, and was asking about him.

Everything else I played was non consequential and non remarkable except for one game with Steven Simons in expert singles. He gave up in the middle of the game and said I win. He was having a really hard time passing on me and just got so upset that he didn’t want to play anymore. On top of that, I was making my unorthodox pass from 2 to 3 on him quite well, which sometimes went into his goal. I think he was an expert.

I didn’t get to watch a lot of Ellen’s game as I was on my own matches when her matches were on. She looked like she was having a good time too, as I frequently saw her moving around the floor with smile on her face.

I hope we can represent bigger next year and take all the titles from Colorado. Come on NYC, you can do it.

Edited by user Tuesday, November 11, 2014 2:01:24 AM(UTC)  | Reason: typos