Reinhardt’s Review: Milwaukee Sting 16 Gold’s Triple Crown Experience In Salt Lake
Hi, my name is Kiara Reinhardt and I am a player from Milwaukee Sting 16 Gold. This weekend we are traveling to Salt Lake City, Utah for theTriple Crown National Invite. This is of the best tournaments in our season, beside nationals. This tournament has the best teams from the entire nation including those that we don’t get to see a lot, such as teams from California and Texas. Knowing at this tournament we will be playing the top competition, our main focus coming in is locking down our serve and pass game. We know that all the teams we play will have great attackers, so we need to serve hard and in certain zones in order to get them out of system. We also need to work our hardest when we are passing to get our team in system to have a higher chance to execute a ball.
We all arrived in Salt Lake tonight on a couple different flights. On the plane, some of us either worked on homework the entire time or some passed out asleep, there was no in between. On the tram to our hotel after the flight, we were all starving when one of our teammates, Elise Goetzinger, says she packed along some snacks. And sure enough, she opens her checked suitcase for all of us to see and almost half of her suitcase is filled with peanut butter, Nutella, pretzels, bread, gummy worms, and more. She won’t be going hungry this weekend.
2/19/18
This morning we went out for a team breakfast at a cafe called From Scratch.
For lunch, we all walked to a large grocery store as a team to pick out what we wanted. Once we got back to the hotel to eat, we all got matched with a partner to eat our lunches with. We had a share part of our lunch with our partner and our partner would share with us, because what is good for them is good for us too. We then ate and talked about what we would do to help each other out when playing this weekend. Since we were all matched up with our position partners, we talked about what we would look for when one of us is in and the other is out to give each other helpful advice.
Later, we had a light serve and pass practice at the convention center. It was super nice to get a feel for the facility and also being up in higher altitude compared to Wisconsin, we were able to feel how that affected us. We started to breathe harder faster, and drinking lots of water to stay hydrated would continue to be very important.
After our practice we went to Olive Garden! We loaded up on carbs to get us through the weekend. The breadsticks were definitely our team’s favorite part of the meal! We shared plenty of laughs and all left with full bellies!
2/20/18
Today was our first day of playing and we finished 3-0, playing two teams from Texas, Skyline 16 Royal and Houston Juniors 16 Elite, and one from California, 16 Rockstar.
After playing, we had the opportunity to go up into Park City for the night. We took two vans, one for the girls and one for the parents. Seeing the mountains on the drive there was absolutely stunning. We ate dinner and then walked around Main Street shopping and taking pictures. Our team is obsessed with dogs, so of course any time we see one we all have to go pet it. We went crazy when we were taking a team picture and a man came over with his dog and let us take a few pictures with it. Park City was probably our most memorable part of this trip to Salt Lake because it was so beautiful and we loved every second of being there.
2/21/18
Today was a very exhausting day for us. We played another three games, all of them going to three sets and went 1-2. We saw that teams at this tournament show tremendous amounts of grit and do not give up easily. We pushed back and fourth each game with our competitors and played every game out until the very last point. Our first game against Rage 16 JEN, a team from southern California, was definitely my favorite match from the entire tournament. It went to three sets, and the third set we won, 23-21. Our team fought off eight match points and we never gave up on winning. We stayed calm and nailed every play to bring us back into the game. We then continued on in the top sixteen teams and took a hard loss to Munciana 16 Ninjas and Colorado Juniors 16 Kara.
After we played, we grabbed a bite to eat and layed around the hotel for the night. We hung out in a teammate’s hotel room for most of the night, having multiple jam sessions to some of our favorite songs such as Halo by Beyonce, Empire State of Mind by JAY Z, and Best Love Song by T-Pain. We also did each other’s hair by braiding cornrows and doing half up buns, and decided we would all wear it the next day when we play.
And for our final day, we went 1-1 and finished in 14th Place in 16 Elite. We won our first game against Seal Beach 16-Black and then lost to Sky High 16 Adidas. Before our second match, even after warmups, our team had to wait close to an extra thirty minutes for the score sheet to print out. After doing a few more warmup drills, our team decided to take a break and play a little hand clapping game. It killed tons of time and shared many laughs while doing it.
After the long days of playing, we came back to the hotel and ordered in pizzas for dinner. We ate as a team and once we were finished, we were finally able to do something we looked forward to all weekend. There was a ice skating rink right outside of our hotel, and after all our waiting, it was time to put our Olympic ice skating skills to the test. We had so much fun skating (and falling)! It was definitely a highlight of the trip for our team!
Our team grew a lot at this tournament and we learned many new things about ourselves individually and as a whole. We were pushed to limits we had never been pushed to, physically and mentally. Teams wanted to break us down, and this weekend sometimes we let them and sometimes we didn’t. This is all part of our process and the mental game is such a huge part of it. We will continue to learn how to fight harder in matches, how to move on and bounce back from our mistakes, and how to individually contribute in our own ways to lead our team. We also learned we can play with any team in the country if we come prepared with the right mindset and our serve and pass game is strong and consistent. Those two things are the foundation of any team and will continue to make us successful in the future. We will return to the gym this week ready to get better everyday and we won’t take any practice for granted. Every second on the court is an opportunity for us to get better and to put in the work towards a chance at winning a National Championship in June.
Sincerely,
Kiara Reinhardt from Milwaukee Sting 16 Gold