Last Saturday was opening weekend of the Sandbar's sand volleyball courts in Ottawa! Peach, Andrew, and the Sandbar Ottawa staff set up a great tournament that featured teams from the Sandbar Ottawa, Sandbar Subs, and Sandbar Lawrence. Oh, and a few parks and rec teams that play all the time in Ottawa- they were good.
We held a sand volleyball tournament last year, and had a party bus with a bunch of people from Lawrence that headed south to Ottawa. Cruzan Rum even sponsored it and provided us with tasty drinks and other fun stuff. This year, most of our staff had prior commitments and we had some trouble rounding up enough people to make up two teams.
Luckily, bartender (and soon-to-be-KU-graduate!) Hayley gathered a bunch of her friends together and saved the day. We put them and door guy Tyler on the Sandbar "New School" team. Our other team was Sandbar "Old School" and consisted of former staffer Pat, official framer Brother Pants, our "ringers"- actual volleyball players/coaches Lisa and Tammy, and me and Dave. We even dug out old school Sandbar t-shirts for our uniforms. Shirts that were printed when Hayley and Tyler were still in grade school.
Sandbar New School was a pretty good team and actually started out in the winner's bracket. Sandbar Old School didn't fare so well; but we blamed it on the early hour. We started out in the loser's bracket, but after warming up our arms (our drinking arms, that is) we managed to win a set.
Dave rigged up his ever-present iPod and we listened to Sandbar tunes all afternoon. There was even some shaking of the tailfeathers on the bleachers at one point- but unfortunately only a few folks knew the dance. Or maybe they were the only ones willing to get up and do it?
After both Lawrence teams were eliminated from the tournament, we hung around for some great Sandbar Ottawa food. Mayor Maynard of Garnett drove up on his Harley and chatted for awhile. And we rang up the biggest tab that Sandbar Ottawa has ever seen, according to manager Coopey.
Thanks also to Pat, aka the Man on the Street, for hooking us all up with special beer koozies, courtesy of his employer Standard Beverage.
If you're interested in setting up a team to play in the Sandbar sand volleyball league, contact Sandbar Ottawa at 785-242-888. It's great exercise- it must be, considering all of us are sore, bruised, and in Dave's case, wearing a knee brace.
More pictures on The Sandbar's Flickr photostream.
