Another one bites the dust...

Another tournament down. We're burning through these things. I wish the squash season lasted longer than it does - getting together with everyone, playing squash, and hanging out is such a blast, and even though Sunday is a day that revolves around serious recovery, it's totally worth it.

This weekend was our club champs. I guess other clubs in the city have the same kind of dealie - only members of the club can play in the tournament so it was all familiar faces. This was the second B draw tournament for me, and as I said before, the idea was to play relaxed and just use this as an opportunity to play people better than me and try hard to keep in the game.

Nikki spanked me, hard. I mean, okay, I knew that was probably going to happen, but did she have to laugh the whole time she was doing it and then make fun of my haircut? She didn't actually do anything like that, but pretending that she did makes for a better story and might garner me more sympathy. People were being really supportive and saying I played well, which was nice, but it felt like I was the one doing all the running. Good thing I'm young and pretty fast. I think I should be able to compete with her in a reasonable amount of time if I keep training the way I have been.

So that meant I was in the consolation draw, which means I play everyone else that had lost some matches. The second game I played was on Friday against Tim. Tim's a great guy and had already played one match that night and lost to Steve Montgomery. I figured the least I could do was offer to match him beer for beer, and we figured that since our game wasn't scheduled until 10pm (and actually would end up being even later than that), we would probably miss out on the frosty beer in the keg unless we did this.

We got on at 10:45 and had each had three beers at this point, and walked on with full cups. After five games and four beers, I was declared the winner at 11:45. Yikes.

I played Zupanc at 10:40 the next morning after going out to the bar with Bevan. I wasn't feeling as bad as I figured I might have after having played until 11:45 and then gone out dancing for another two hours, so that was good. Zupanc was talking trash all the way up to the game, but sang a different tune when I beat him 3-1. That punk told me that he let me win so that he wouldn't have to referee, but the joke was on him because I let him let me win.

Bevan and I played each other again in the finals for the consolation. He took the first game from me 10-8, and the second game went 10-9 for me. Close matches. I switched the pace to a much slower game in the third and took it from Bevan 9-3, so I was feeling great, but I just couldn't close the deal and he came back to win the last two games for the victory. We played a really good game, and I can't complain about the loss - Like I said before, Bevan and I go back and forth - I'll take a match off of him when it counts sooner or later. Would have been nice to make this the one, but he fought hard for it.

On another positive note, Bevan got awarded the most improved player of the year award - that's pretty wicked. Of course, I wouldn't have complained if it had been awarded to me, but Bevan's been putting in a lot of effort and definitely earned it. Plus, as his training partner, I can quietly feel partly responsible for that.

We went out to Legends afterwards for the banquet, but Bay and I had to call it quits at midnight - that place is just way too much for me to handle once they open the gates and let the freakshow in. At one point a sailor came up and asked me where the best place to get laid in town was. Rather than answering "Johnson St. Bridge", I half-jokingly suggested the Boom Boom Room (what do I know?) - turns out that they're banned from going to Boom Boom Room and Diego's. Weird. It must have been a sad day when the Boom Boom Room had it's doors closed permanently to sailors around the world.

I don't really have anything in particular that I'm working towards right now - During tournaments it's generally better to focus on playing the game that you do have at your disposal as best as possible and ignoring (or better yet, avoiding) the shots that you don't have down well. After the Pac Rim, I'm sure I'll have a lot of things to work on and will be putting those up here. Apparently some people are using that to try and figure out how to best destroy me on court. That suits me fine - the more chance I get to practice the things that I suck at, the better I get at them.

So that's that - the rest of Sunday is going to be a lazy day spent sitting around doing income tax. Huzzah! Tomorrow is the final for Division 3 league, with Bevan and I playing spots one and two (we've been alternating). I'm playing Ken Moselle tomorrow and expect to win that match. He's been trying to gain some kind of psychological leverage against me by repeatedly telling me why he'll beat me. I guess that's fine, but I would rather not have to listen to it. We'll see how things go down tomorrow.

Oh yeah, more training too - I've been thinking about how to keep things on the path to improvement, and as soon as my company moves (we're moving from the fourth and fifth floor down to the third floor), I'm going to start jogging three times a week on my lunch break. Waiting until we've moved might seem like a weird idea, but it's mostly because our new floor will also include a shower, which is essential to avoid ponging the people that I work with. There's nothing worse than trying to complete a challenging task on time while the person that sits beside you is ponging you. I don't want to be that guy.

I'm not fully sure yet how I'm going to keep track of my progress. I know some people might think it's stupid to worry about something like that, but I'm definitely a goal oriented person, and the best way for me to stay motivated is to be able to see my improvement in a tangible manner. My main goal in doing this is to be able to play a hard five games twice in one day (tournament stylee) without gassing and starting to hit lazy winners when I shouldn't be. Playing against Bevan in the Courtney tournament showed me that even though I consider myself fairly fit, I still have lots of room for improvement, and I'd really like to be able to keep up a fast pace and apply continuous pressure to my opponent while being able to handle anything they throw out myself.