Akron volleyball tournament

Yesterday I went to Akron with the Aliquippa GOYAns for a GOYA volleyball tournament. Volleyball tournaments are one day and don’t involve hotel stays, dances or Liturgies. Rene and I left our house at 7:00 and pulled into Thia Ellen’s driveway at 7:29. We waited for everyone to get there and left her house around 7:50. I had an interesting car ride, in the passenger seat of Thia Ellen’s van, with Arete, Markella, Eleni, Artemis and Lia. I leaned out the window a few times signaling for truckers to honk, and amusing Thia Angela’s carful of boys (Rene, Jimmy, Nick, Louie and Anthony), who participated.

We got to Akron around 9:15 and the first junior game was at 9:45, followed by the first senior game at 10:30. We lost both. It was nice to see so many of my old GOYA friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in a very long time. Both teams won their second game. Lunch consisted of pasta, shrimp, vegetables, salad and garlic toast. At one point, Louie wanted to see the church so we went in and of course he wanted to go up and see the organ. We looked around and noticed a stairway and decided to explore. We went into dark passageways, empty classrooms and encountered locked doors. It was an adventure. The junior team won their third game and lost the fourth, while the senior team lost the third, eliminating them.

We left the church around 3:30 and went thirty minutes to a BRAVO restaurant to eat. Our waitress was a woman named Sonia and Markella really took a liking to her and was talking to her. She got us crayons and people drew very crazy stuff.



There was also a waiter named Ryan who had a shaved head, and Markella asked to rub it for good luck. He let her.

We left the restaurant around 5:25 and encountered an accident on the interstate (please pray…there was a semi in a ditch and a car totaled, with many firetrucks/ambulances/police cars on the scene) and were stuck in traffic for a long time. While in traffic we wrote signs in sharpie on tablets, saying “We <3 Ice Cream (and Greece),” and “Will you marry me?” and “we love you (no homo)” and silly stuff like that for the people in the other cars, while blasting music with the windows down ;)

[It was a great day today, with victories by both the senior and junior divisions. I enjoyed watching the kids I grew up with succeed today, and must say they played well. Well my time here is short so I must be on my way. HAPPY LENT.] – contributed by Nick M.