Sunday, August 17, 2008 8:45 PM CDT
New mud volleyball contest draws crowd
By DAVE FOPAY, Staff Writer
dfopay@jg-tc.com
STEWARDSON — For a small-town festival that’s called a homecoming, it makes sense that a big part of it would be for friends who perhaps hadn’t seen each other for a while to get back together.
But is doing that worth splashing around in ankle-deep mud for a few hours, trying to knock a volleyball over a net when you can barely move, unless that means a dive into the muck? For Heather Brockett and Corey Musson, the answer’s an easy “yes.”
Brockett and Musson were teammates Saturday on the squad that won the opening match in the Stewardson Homecoming’s first-ever mud volleyball tournament. After the game — during which they seemed to spend the most time of any of the players giving up their bodies and cleanliness for the sake of the competition — both said they enjoyed spending time with the other players as much as actually playing.
“It’s summertime and it’s something to get the kids back together,” Brockett said.
Musson explained that their team was made up of high school classmates. Once he got onto the volleyball court — well, maybe we should call it a pit instead of court, given the conditions — he didn’t mind going beyond the inevitable: getting nearly covered in mud instead of just splattered.
“I thought it would be fun,” he said. “I like playing volleyball but I never thought I’d play the mud. I’m pretty competitive.”
Brockett agreed that, if you’re going to play in a mud volleyball tournament, it only makes sense to dive, splash or otherwise do whatever you can for the effort.
“You’ve got to give your all,” she said. “If you can’t roll around in the mud, you might as well not come.”
In fact, the match itself wasn’t enough for some of the players, who took advantage of the time before the second contest started to have a few wrestling matches in the pit as well.
With the deep mud limiting the players’ mobility, volleys of any real duration were rare, and it seemed that it didn’t take long for the players to figure out that if they could just get the ball back over the net, there was a good chance to win a point.
In all, five different teams took part in the tournament, with three of them made up of Stewardson residents and two others coming from the surrounding area. Tournament organizer Cassie Schneider said she was pleased with the amount of interest in the event.
“I had no idea how many were going to show up,” she said.
While the Stewardson Homecoming also featured a car show, queen pageant and other traditional festival events, Schneider said she wanted to try to come with something new. When she suggested the tournament to members of the village’s Lions Club, the festival’s sponsor, “everyone got real excited about it,” she said.
Contact Dave Fopay at dfopay@jg-tc.com or 348-5733.
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