Louisville

As usual, I’m a little behind in my updates. Let’s start with Easter weekend.

When Hannah’s volleyball schedule was released, we saw the final tournament was going to be in Louisville, Kentucky in April. A bit of a drive, not too bad, we can easily get there in a day. Oh, it’s over Easter weekend. Swell. So much for spending time with the relatives. We’ll be spending three tournament days with our volleyball family instead.

Mostly non-action photography on the first day. Here are a couple of pics from day 1 (Hannah is #19):

The city of Louisville has plenty of attractions to kill a few hours here and there around the time of what brought you there. It has a nice walkable downtown area on the Ohio River, plenty of restaurants and bars, and we made the most of our time there.

The Louisville Slugger factory and museum was first on our list of things to do. It’s a small machine shop that turns wood billets into baseball bats. Not rocket science, but they do it well as evidenced by the number of hall of famers that use their product. The place is easy to find – just look for the big bat leaning up against the wall:

	Hannah holding the big bat.
Me using Cal Ripken’s bat. I had to wear white gloves.	Hannah mirroring the Babe.

The first is actually a scan of a post card. The weather was cloudy/rainy, so there were few opportunities for sunny photos.

I went for more action shots on day 2 of the tournament. Plenty of opportunity to try different things with my equipment. Hannah is still #19.

Next on our tour of the town was Churchill Downs race track. On this Kentucky Derby weekend (as I write this), it was great to see the overhead shots of a crazy-crowded Churchill Down in contrast to how it looked while we were there.

Day 3 of the tournament was short for our team and we were able to leave in time to make it home the same day.

Participating in a tournament this large was quite a thrill. Seeing over 400 teams from around the country on 54 courts over 3 days allowed the girls to experience something that they will remember for years. While the outcome wasn’t what we had hoped, it provided an opportunity to showcase our talent and measure our game versus some truly great teams. Looking forward to trying it again next year!