Inter-church young adult sport competition recap

I can't believe how fast this year is going! After what seemed like months of planning and anticipation it was time for this years inter-church young adult sports competition.

On Thursday after class I drove to the shops with a shopping list in hand and budget to buy food for our team - we supply breakfast and lunch. For breakfast there was a selection of cereals and toast and for lunch we did cold meat and salad wraps, I also bought some fruit and muesli bars for energy.  I was able to come under budget despite having to run back to the shops because I had forgotten a few items.
Friday I took it easy and did some retail therapy grabbing the latest season of Brooklyn Nine Nine on dvd, I knew it would be a high anxiety weekend and hoped that by taking it easy I would be able to survive the weekend with minimal anxiety.  As I was on organising the food for the weekend I grated the carrots for the wraps and finished packing the groceries - a friend was picking them up as room was going to be tight.
This year I wasn't driving myself down and was instead carpooling with a few other young adults, we left around 5.30pm and took the long way down instead of the freeway to avoid all the long weekend traffic with a stop halfway to grab dinner. We arrived around 7.45/8.00pm which wasn't too bad, unloaded the car and got settled in for the weekend. We are fortunate to have some contacts that let us stay in a school gym for the weekend just our church instead of getting squished into various rec centres (with other churches) that require us to pack up our stuff before the sports begin each morning.
We had a team meeting (I think there was about 22 of us in total), distributed shirts (yes they were bright pink with a blue splatter in the middle and then our logo on the splatter, this was to work in with the 90s theme for the weekend) and worked out the plans for the next days in terms of transport and what the weekend would look like overall. This year instead of getting a physical fixture book all the fixtures were posted online a week prior to the event. As a volunteer I was rostered on to score for the Indoor Beach Volleyball Saturday and Sunday mornings, Netball Saturday afternoon and Uno Sunday afternoon. On Saturday we had a rally/90s party and I put myself down as unavailable on the Sunday night as I knew I would be half dead by then.  In the past I have had a break at some point and only scheduled on for 3 slots but unfortunately that didn't happen, which was annoying and meant that by the end of the weekend I was running on empty.

We woke up bright and early on Saturday morning as we had to be at the main rec centre at 7.30am, I set out stuff for breakfast and explained how making lunch would work. We then headed to the rec centre for the opening ceremony before heading off to our various sports at various locations. A few of us met back at the rec centre for lunch before heading out for the afternoons sports. The netball and volleyball was at the same location so after I was finished scoring the netball I walked over watched the volleyball team their last match before we headed back to the gym where we were staying to change and relax. Some of us had showers, others rested and others chatted and ate brownies.

This year the theme was the 90s so we were encouraged to dress '90s' which no one really knew how (I wore my Friends hoodie, sparkly eye shadow, and sparkly silver flats) and after the rally (really a church service but aimed at young adults) there was a bit of a 90s party happening with 90s music and dancing. By the end of the rally a lot of us were crashing after such a busy day so half of the team went back to the gym while the other half stayed for the party, I stayed for a while as I wanted to push myself but eventually I felt myself crashing thankfully a friend had driven his car so we left early.
We chatted for a while at the gym before turning in for the night, thankfully none of us were due anywhere until 9.00am on Sunday so we didn't have to get up quite as early as we did on Saturday.

Sunday morning after breakfast we all sorted out where we were headed, I was on beach volleyball again but thankfully I didn't have to score (apparently I not only can't play volleyball I can't score it either!) and was given the task of entering in the scores in the fixtures. My cousin was actually playing volleyball with her church so we got to chat in her teams breaks and she versed my church which was fun (they won and proceeded to win all their games).
Our whole team actually had sports at the main rec centre in the afternoon so we met back there for lunch and enjoyed some sunshine before going to our separate sport location spots. It was at this point I was starting to zone out so I drank some Sprite and used the energy from the sugar to power through the afternoon. Scoring Uno wasn't too bad and I got to chat with people from the other teams which was fun. I ended up chatting with some people from cousin's church (who my uncle is the pastor of) and found out that she refers to me as the 'cousin with the blog', I am still working out whether that is a compliment or not and how it came to be!
The other sports didn't start until 6.30pm so we all headed back to the gym where it was decided we would go to a bistro for dinner for some team bonding and decent food. The food wasn't and we all enjoyed a decent meal (I shared a woodfired pizza with a friend) before going in cars and heading to our various locations. I went with the dodgeball, chess and connect four people back at the main rec centre and watched a bit of each. The dodgeball team had a large break between their first and second games so we all watched our teammates play chess and chatted. We got into the semi finals of connect four, just missed out on the semi finals of chess (by 2%) and failed at dodgeball (which always happens) and we all headed back to the gym via a stop at a grocery store to pick up a cake as one of the girls in our team had a birthday on Saturday and we figured we should celebrate it.
Once the bulk of our team returned we sang happy birthday to her before chilling out eating cake. Some people decided to play cards and I finally got to read a book before heading to bed.

Monday those who weren't leaving early went to McDonalds for a late breakfast before heading to the rec centre to watch the netball and basketball finals and attend the closing ceremony where we would find out where we placed and pick up our trophies. We came 6th (out of 16) in the small church division and 16th (out of 30 something) in the main division, along with winning Ultimate Frisbee, mens squash, womens squash, runner up in mixed badminton and a couple of others I think. Once the closing ceremony finished we all left the gym and went our separate ways exhausted but happy after a fun weekend.