Heaven (or something like it)

Playing for the tennis team here in Defiance has some of its perks. Every year we get to take a trip to Hilton Head, South Carolina and play there for a week. It is beautiful here, right now as I am typing this, I am sitting on the third floor balcony, in a comfortable wicker rocking chair, listing to Dave Matthews Band, with a nice tall glass of ice water at my side, with the very warm air of South Carolina with a slight but perfect ocean breeze. I have seen some very nice parts of the country like Hawaii, Arizona, California, and NYC, but right here is up there on that list. With the great views of ocean and sandy beaches it almost takes your breath away. However for all nice things to happen I quote The Dark Night, "it gets darkest before dawn"

In order to get here from Defiance, Ohio the logical thing would be to fly, it's fast and for the most part comfortable. However we get the luxury of squeezing 10 guys into two vans including all the luggage. That including all clothing for all ten guys and each of there tennis bags which seeing the size of their tennis bags might as well be another suitcase all its own. So needless to say the trip was quite tight to say the least. (and not that good "tight" some gangsta's use it as). But of course that's not punishment enough, in order to get here in good time we had to leave at 3 a.m. Yep you didn't read that wrong 3 A.M. So to put things into perspective, I was tired and on a very uncomfortable van squeezed into a cornor I suppose I could call my own and tried to sleep. It didn't quite work out of the 14 hours it took to get here I maybe slept for 3 maybe 4 of them. Despite this it has been a blast so far. Especially with the goofy and non stop laughter from the guys on the tennis team
On the way down a few of the guys (not including me I was in the other van) decided it would be fun to have the "Kurtz-Cottos Olympics". These two on our tennis team are in a way rivals of each other, they always have to be better then the other, in EVERYTHING. So they decided to settle it once and for all with a seven game Olympic. To make it interesting throw a twist to it. The winner gets to pick the nickname that the rest of the team has to call them. The twist however is the winner also gets to pick the nickname for the loser. It turned out to be quite entertaining. We held the first event tonight to sorta kick off the vacation in a bang.

The first event was billiards, best two out of three games. The first game was interesting. It went back and forth as best as two sub average billiards players can play. It also had some obstacles for the players that not every game of pool will give you. Among having to make a difficult cut on the ball, the player had to balance on a very springy bed, be careful not to hit a spectator or a commentator (the role Trevor and I somehow picked up by making jokes back and forth to each other about the game) or even careful not to step on a dog that was running amongst the pool table. So after a very dramatic battle the game went to Cottos with Kurtz accidentally hitting the 8 ball in.

The second game was just as goofy with all the same antics and jokes and obstacles. Cottos coming off a good win in the first game took that momentum and came out guns a blazin with a spray and pray tactic. Going for the make but not leaving much for the next shot. It was working quite effectively as he took a 7-1 ball lead. However this last ball proved to be a problem and ironically enough it was "not"so lucky ball 7. After missing shot after shot on the 7 ball Kurtz chipped away at his lead. It came down to Cottos scratching on the 8 ball making Kurtz the victor.

With both players not wanting to win and just handing the game over we wondered how this deciding game three would go. It came down to Kurtz just regrouping and sinking his last shot on the 8 ball and taking a 1-0 lead in the "Olympics". The next event is the "50" meter dash. I put quotes on it because were just gonna eyeball the 50 meters. In an interview with my co-commentator Cottos said, "he is going to use his speed to win this next event" quite a clever and risky tactic for a race. We shall see how the rest of these games go. Good luck to both competitors.