2010 ALOHA OPEN

The ninth annual Aloha Open is over and was a great tournament for all involved. Racquetball is a sport that has a very strong social aspect to it and we try to provide a venue that makes it an important part of the event. The competition was tough, as evidenced by the number of tiebreakers, and we had great hospitality all weekend with the knock out punch being the Aloha party, where the Tsunami Wave Riders band performed for the players for 3 hours. The matches ended at 7pm Saturday (well, except for those breakers) and everyone was able to enjoy the Bar-B-Que dinner as the Wave Riders took to the stage. At the first break, awards were given to the people that make the tournament possible, and then the raffle was held as the band provided background music. If you didn't win something in this raffle, you didn't Tiki

buy a ticket, as we had a ton of stuff available. The grand prize was a $350 Croton watch, but we also had gift certificates from Racquetworld.com, gift cards, and a certificate for a free weekend rental of a luxury BMW car. After some more great music from the band, we had our Limbo for cash competition with a $50 prize for the winner. As the band played on, the dancers emerged, and a great time was had by all that stayed. Sunday saw some great matches with Brent Walters bringing back his game to beat Brian Bottomley in the Men's Open final in 2 games. Brent and his partner, Ben Spooner also won the Men's Open doubles. Brenda Kyzer won the Women's Open and the Mixed Open doubles and almost pulled out the triple win by getting to the finals in the Men's Elite. But it was not to be as local player, Corbin Dirks, took the win in that division. The last match of the day was the Men's B/C doubles, and as would be expected, it was a two hour tiebreaker match, with the team of Davis\Davis winning over the team of Soofi/Soofi. I would like to thank a few people for their help in putting on this event. First has to be my good friend and TMT Event partner, Mike (Bush Hog) Bourgeois. He shows up with me on Thursday before the event and works the entire tournament with no breaks, and doesn't leave until I do on Monday. I could not do these events without him and everyone should know that. Joanne Chertoff is always there for us, and makes sure the auction goes off as planned and helps us at the desk all weekend. Donna Matthews and Joy Job help us with our hospitality and making sure everyone is fed. Jordan and Jacob Matthews helped out with whatever we needed all weekend from reffing to setting up the party. ShelbiLyn Boelsche took a lot of the photos for this event. And a special thanks goes out to Mark Straubel for staying Sunday night and helping us to load up. If he had not stayed, we would have gotten out of the club much later than the 8pm time that we finished. And last, but not least, our thanks go out to Bobby Thore, owner of the club, for providing us the venue for the event and securing all our sponsor dollars and hospitality. We also thank all the players for participating and showing great sportsmanship throughout the weekend. This is a great event, and the players make it worth it every year.

TMT NEWS

2010 ALOHA OPEN

Post Rating

Comments

Post Comment