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Have you ever won a tournament (in whatever your sport is) and wondered how the heck you pulled it off?!  Well that’s how I feel about San Francisco.  If I were to grade our performance it would be about a B.  The one thing we did really well was finish off games.  All four matches this weekend were super close.

First was Wong n Olson.  1st set Wong served great and we lost 19-21 with a spade down the middle from Wong.  Starting the 2nd set we wanted to change it up a bit so we split blocked (I block 1/2 the time, Rosie blocks 1/2 the time) the rest of the match.  If you know volleyball, you know that me in the backcourt and Sean at the net is not our strongest defense, but sometimes getting a little wierd shakes things up enough to get the juices going again and we were able to squeak out the win.  Some how it worked and we won 21-18 and 15-10.

Second up was Scott n Lucena.  These guys have had our number this year with a 2-0 record against us this year, including a smashing of 21-12 n 21-13 in Cincinatti.  In both sets of this one we were down and came back in the end with blocks by Rosie and a great late pull at the net for a critical point in game 1.  Highlight for me was scooping (digging) Sean Scott twice in second set at 18-17 to go 20-17 and then hearing Nick say to S Scott “Dude it’s Jake Gibb back there!”.  They then got it to 20-19 when Scott blocked me and then I  sided out for the win.

Third up was Keenan n Hyden.  The week before in Santa Barbara they beat us 19-21, 21-6, 15-6.  They outscored us 36 to 12 in the final 2 sets!  No we weren’t injured and no we weren’t sick.  I wish I had an excuse for it but it was just an old fashioned beat down.  So this week in San Fran some lady kept yelling “just like last week” whenever we would give up a point.  So we squeaked out a 3 set win, 15 to 10 in the 3rd, and made it to the finals.  Yeah!  We’re back!

Finals was interesting.  21-10 in the first against Todd n Phil.  We actually didn’t play that poorly.  Phil was just Phil and went on a scoring rampage with blocks and aces galore.  Oh how I hate him sometimes.  2nd set Rosie sided out for the 21-19 win.  Then Geeter went on his “Under Pressure” rant to get the players and the crowd going for the 3rd set.  This one was all time!  He said “….from Bountiful, Utah!  Where the hell is Bountiful, Utah son!”.  Then over to Phil where he says, “Fabio from Brazil is still having nightmares about you isn’t he Phil?!”  Classic!  Maybe you had to be there, but that guy carries our tour.

So I can’t even remember how exactly but we were up in the 3rd 14-13 and I hit a cut shot over Phil for the win!  Even while recapping this, I’m still in awe we beat all those great teams with the way we played!  We just kinda hung around all tournament and pulled it out in the end somehow.  Beautiful really!

Outside of volleyball I got to play some fun golf with JT and hung out with a childhood friend Dave Bigelow on Saturday night.  My sisters Christine and Marali were at the tournament and we had a good time as well.  I’m out…I need to play some golf!

Well I forgot to write about my 2 weeks of the winter tour.  What a great time!  It was much more laid back atmosphere because the four mens players decided to spit the money.  We got to play volleyball for no other reason than to just play.  It reminded me of why I started playing this sport in the first place, which was because I just loved competing and having fun with friends.  Each night right after the event we would load up in the rock star bus they had waiting for us and we’d be off to the next city.  We would travel anywhere from 2 to 8 hrs that night and then perform again the next night.  I say perform because that is what it felt like.  A circus or rock band performance with the travel from city to city and getting in 4 matches in an hr and a half time frame.  The best part was I think we added some new fans to the AVP.  A lot of kids that hadn’t ever seen pro beach volleyball live got to come and buy up all the AVP apparel and watch some good volleyball.

It was fun playing against Rosie.  I sometimes take how good he is for granted,  playing along side him for these last two years.  When he hits smart he is unstoppable.  He was slice cutting some insane shots that I couldn’t get even when blocking angle.  Then he went deep middle over the top of my block and made me feel very little.

Furby and I had some great matches against Rosie and Casey.  We had been talking trash for the last year about this exact match up whenever we hung 0ut.  Casey/Rosie think they should never lose to two big guys like us for some reason.  We had a steak dinner on the series for the week and if anyone swept it than it was dinner at Mastros.  Needless to say Furby and I swept 3-0.  Suck on it! Maaaaaaaaaaastros!!!

Other than that life has been pretty low key.  Just getting excited for the upcoming year!

Jake