double trouble's history
How the 6th Annual Double Trouble Tournament started and evolved
2014The first year of Double Trouble, Scott Davis and I decided to run a small tournament for very little cost with the express intention of having fun. I gathered the players, and Scott was the Tournament Director. We had approximately 12 teams.
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2015By the time the second Double Trouble tournament came around, I had started thinking about how to gather more people and how to get everyone to have more fun. We threw in a free BBQ and actually posted well in advance on Facebook. I believe the grand prize was $150. Again, this was a very low cost tournament and Scott Davis was Tournament Director. This was the last year I played in Double Trouble. We ended up with around 34 teams.
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2016The 3rd annual Double Trouble really started to ramp up the advertising efforts. The Tournament fee was still very low, adding in a $500 cash prize to the winner, and with 53 teams, I knew that I wouldn't be able to play in the tournament and still keep the tournament flowing. A large tournament was my goal, so I took over as Tournament Director not really understanding how much I was undertaking. Scott was a lifesaver by handling the net setup and teardown, and many other volunteers stepped up to make everything run smoothly. This was the first year having an after party and buying 200 fireball and other types of shots will be the annual tradition. We had over 100
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people show up at The Roadhouse for an awesome party! I realized that I would need to raise the entry fee to cover all the ideas I had in my head for future years.
20172017 was bigger and better than ever! Along with an ever expanding Reverse Coed Doubles tournament, we added in a C/D level Coed 6s division and had 144 total players. Up from 106 the year before. We also added Dri-fit shirts shirts for every player, more prizes, and a $750 cash prize. I had $500 set aside for Spike2Care, but just a few days before the tournament, tragedy struck one of our own, Silas Fairbanks, and medical bills were
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through the roof. Our volleyball community really pulled together. Not only did the $500 get redirected to Silas' medical bills, but the winning team Ricardo and Chelsea donated all their winnings back to Silas. Beyond all of that, donation jars were setup by Spike2Care and a lot more was gathered.
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2018
In 2018, I was in the process of selling my house and didn't think I would be able to run the tournament. I requested help from Spike2Care to run the tournament for me for one year, but I couldn't just let it go completely. Instead, I received an enormous amount of help from the Spike2Care members to organize manpower to make the tournament possible. I decided not to run C and D 6s because of the time required for promotion to make it successful, but it will be returning in 2019! The doubles part of the tournament went great and the weather couldn't have been much better!
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2019 was a huge success, and easily our biggest turnout yet! We had 176 players with 80 total teams. With so much growth, I'll need to get a LOT more help to continue making everything run smoothly, and multiple people have already generously offered their services for next year. I could not have handled this many people without morning to night help from Dennis Baal, Isaac Lanctot, and Logan Morley, along with all the other volunteers for setup, teardown, lunch, and registration. With 24 AA teams in 2019, we will almost certainly push for sponsorships to increase the cash prize, as well as to add more and more to make the tournament into a world class event.
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