The 17U Fusion Girls set out for Waterloo on Thursday, April 29th.  With an 8:00 a.m.  game on Friday, the girls were up bright and early and off to Rim Park.  We were coming into this tournament ranked 6th overall and feeling very confident.  We had by far the best warm up of every team present, and came out successful against the Peel Selects 93 (25-21, 25-21).  Our next game was set to be against The Fire And Fury from Burlington.  Once again, the girls played well and came out on top (25-16, 25-16).   The next game was the game we were all looking forward to, against the Toronto Element team.  The girls dug deep and fought out every point, but unfortunately did not come out on top this time (22-25, 21-25).  We also suffered a devastating loss when Kendra rolled her ankle.   After a long day of play, we set out to eat a team dinner at Montana’s, yummy!

Day 2 was going to be a very hard day of play and we knew we were going to have to step it up.  Our first game was against Defensa.  We came out with slow feet and poor ball control, and ended up losing in 2 straight sets.  Our second game was against the Scarborough Falcons.  Another weak game landed us 0-2 so far on day 2 with one game to go.  Our last game was against DRVC.  Even though we have been in Premier Division with DRVC all season, we had yet to play them.   Our girls came out with more heart and played like a team but unfortunately we made just a few too many errors and DRVC took the game in 2 sets.  After a day of tough play, the team and the parents had dinner at the hotel buffet and afterwards spent some time bonding as a team (love that Catch Phrase!).  We were off to bed to get ready for what was to be a long and hard day 3.

For the third day in a row we played at 8:00 and it was starting to get rough.  We came out sort of sleepy against the 16U KW Predators.  This pre-quarter was a very important game – we needed to win to stay in the top eight and unfortunately we fell just short of that.  With a very tough loss behind us, we came out strong against the Mavericks and took them in 2 sets.  We were off to the tier 2 semi-final against the 16U Georgetown Impact team.   We came out strong and just managed to pull out a W to move on to the final.  We were set to play the 16U Titans Nemesis (this year’s Provincial Champions).  They gave us a great run for our money taking us to 3 sets - 3 unbelievably tight sets - but in the end, the Fusion girls pulled out on top.  With a ninth place finish (and a tier 2 gold medal), we were not all very happy, but glad that we had made the best of a bad situation.

Thanks to all the parents who came out and not only supported us but were our scorekeepers, lineskeepers, photographers and videographers.  As always, a huge thank-you to Cathy, Linden and Jess for all your support, patience and creativity.