Day One

We departed from Forest Grove at 4 AM, flew out of Portland at 6:30 AM, landed in Minneapolis, caught the light rail, then the bus, and now we're here: University of Minnesota. It's been a long day, but surprisingly, there were no travel meltdowns. This is a rarity for the handball team if you have read anything about our previous adventures. The only real excitement was walking the wrong direction for two blocks in the roughly twenty-degree weather trying to find Qudoba (thanks, to Patty's wonderful iPhone navigations). It turns out there was an entire street full of restaurants only a block away from the rec. center. We learned this after we walked for six blocks there and back. Normally, we would not complain about the walk, except it is absolutely freezing here.

We also had a wonderful team dinner at a very classy establishment known as Burger King here in Minnesota. The other classy establishment close to our hotel (Arby's) was closed. 

Today was an excellent day of handball. Most of our newbies played today along with our doubles team. Today's results are as follows [Note: today's matches were played to 15]:

Men's Challenger-Contender-Novice

Chuong Nguyen (175) v. Steven Totzke (Minnesota State, 178)-- L (6, 5)

Men's Intermediate-Challenger-Contender

Danny Williams (140) v. Logan Vincent (Texas A&M, 149)-- W (4, (4), 4)

Josh Bateman (135) v. Michael Petefish (Florida, 154)-- L (6, 14)

Collin Weigel (143) v. Josh Pinter (Marquette, 146)-- L (3, 0)

Women's Intermediate-Challenger-Contender

Mimi Takamune (69) v. Whitney Moore (Southwestern, 76)-- W (0, 0)

Elizabeth Sherman (75) v. Kimberly Hughes (Florida, 70)-- W (3, 3)

Men's B Doubles

Matt Levine/Casey Merscher (8) v. Novak/Nordhal (Minnesota State, 9)-- W ((11), 8, 1)

Go Boxers!

Disclaimer: All opponents names are as listed on the tournament brackets. Pacific University is not responsible for the misspellings of the names listed anywhere in this blog.