SEATTLE, WA--May 26, 2009
2009 Youth VB League

WVBA is very happy with the results of their first ever spring youth league for younger players in grades 3-7. We played and trained for five consecutive Wednesday evenings at Northshore Junior High School. We experimented with the rules and progressed through a modified game of 4 vs. 4 on a smaller court with a lower net.

Thanks to Sarah Chase, Mary Cotton, Lauri Sears, Tim Marvin and Jackie Devich for organizing the league and keeping things running smoothly. Thanks also to all of the WVBA players that came out to help with coaching these future volleyball players. It was a lot of fun for everyone.

These younger (and smaller) players quickly adapted to rules allowing them to catch the first two contacts to emphasize the play at the net with lots of hitting and blocking.

We will be holding a demonstration tournament in conjunction with the Emerald City Classic Invitational over Memorial Day Weekend at the University of Washington.

The youth tournament will take place from 8:30am-12:30pm on Memorial Day on Court 25 in Dempsey Indoor. Please try to come out and take a look at a new way to teach younger players the game of vollebyall that is both fun and fast paced.

What a Great Weekend
We are so happy to have been blessed with amazing weather for all three days of this year's tournament. The teams and spectators were able to enjoy the sunny days outside in the plazas in between their competition. Other than some serious glitches in our scheduling software for Monday's bracket play, the tournament ran very smoothly. The competition was awesome and the atmosphere was festive.

Thanks to everyone that came and a huge thanks to the University of Washington for allowing us the use of their beautiful facilities. This tournament is virtually a 100% volunteer effort and is made possible by the unbelievable hours of work by our tournament Czar, Jim Clavadetscher.

Scheduling Software Snafu
We are extremely sorry for the scheduling problems we had on Monday's bracket play. Somehow we had linked our current format do an older master court schedule that caused our initial schedule to be virtually worthless. We spent 6-1/2 hours on Sunday afternoon-evening completely re-writing the schedule for Monday. This caused three teams to miss their matches entirely. This is obviously not what we wanted nor what you have grown to expect from us. Please accept our apologies and know that we are always doing the very best that we can to put on a great tournament and that we will do everything possible to avoid any last-minute scheduling problems next year.

Lost and Found
We have collected many items in the lost and found and we will make every effort match lost items with their owners. Please contact us if you have lost anything and we will try to get it to you in one way or another.

Results Posting
Results were posted much more slowly this year than in past years due to our webmaster needing to coach his team, which was thoroughly enjoyable. The final results are posted now and we will post the photos of the winners of all divisions plus the All Tournament Selections and Candis Carter award winners in the coming days.

If you have any questions regarding the Emerald City Classic tournament, please contact our the tournament director by email at ecc@wvba.org.