Book Review | ARC Review | Come Die With Me by Vanessa M. Knight | (Contains Spoilers)
November 21, 2023Mattis nunc orci convallis est ligula potenti gravida molestie
November 22, 2023
Joel travelled to Austin, TX to play in a tournament over the weekend. It was for Amateurs only – anyone who had won a main draw pro match was not allowed to play. The payout for the tourney was winner takes all $25,000!
I didn’t get to go with so most of this is relaying from the texts Joel sent or from when he got home and filled me in. I thought it deserved it’s own, permanent post on the blog!
Joel was able to stay with his Aunt and spend some time with family for the little amount of time he wasn’t playing. He also got to do some drilling Friday night after he got there on the roof of a parking ramp – and saw someone he actually knew there! Small world
Tournament Info:
——– Amateurs Only ——– Doubles Only ——–
The Kitchen along with our partners at Joola are proud to present THE KITCHEN OPEN.
THE KITCHEN OPEN is our largest amateur event to date. This amateur tournament will be held in November 16th-19th in Austin, TX. There will also be a Finals Party, where ONE TEAM WILL WIN $25,000, the LARGEST PRIZE IN AMATEUR PICKLEBALL HISTORY! 💥
There are divisions based on age (open age play and 40+), skill level (3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, and OPEN), as well as gender doubles and mixed. ALL TEAMS IN EACH DIVISION WILL PLAY 12 GAMES MINIMUM!
Pool Play
Pool play took place most of the day on Saturday. The original format was supposed to be that each team would play each other 2 games and the top two teams from each pod would move on to bracket play. Since there were 60 teams competing in the tournament, they decided to only do one game against each team.
Joel and his partner lost the first game so the pressure was on. They came back and won the rest of the games, going 6-1 in their pool, placing them 2nd. Their pool seemed to be a pretty tough pool. They had some pretty tight games, one of them was 15-14!
Bracket Play
Bracket play started that night. They would need to one game to move on to the quarterfinals and play on Sunday.
Due to the time it would take, the tournament organizers almost changed the format for bracket play to one game to 15 – no one wanted that so they played 2/3 to 11. This worked out well since they lost the first game of their first bracket match but came back and won to move on to the next day.
Sunday morning they were supposed to start at 10:30am. They were going to be playing at a private venue, but it started sprinkling, making it slippery enough that they had to hold off.
After a while, the tournament organizers called around and found a place to play indoors. The venue they were going to be playing with was just finished with construction and wasn’t even open to the public yet!
In the quarterfinals, they won 11-1, 11-5 to move onto the semis. They won their semi final match as well to move on to the finals!
They fought hard to the end, but came up just short, lowing 10-12 and 9-11. Joel rolled his ankle on one of the plays when he landed on the post of the net.
The loss was just a little easier to swallow – at the semis all the guys decided they wanted to divvy up the $25K. All 8 guys wanted to do that before they started the semis so all 4 teams would come away with something. I thought that was a really neat thing!
Someone videod the finals – which was great since there were ZERO updates the whole tournament. I was a nervous wreck just waiting to get texts from Joel. The video was cool to watch with Joel – there were quite a few people there that were cheering them on!