Travel day is always crazy. I've coordinated trips for ten years, more than 40 multi-team trips, but have never gone with nine teams.  No matter how the rest of the tournament goes I find it a great success to have 143 players and 20 staff (and all accompanying parents) all make it off planes, into vans, to the hotel, and well fed without any major complications.  Kids were great traveling, patient waiting for vans, and good into hotel rooms. It is really fun to see over 100 of them all lined up for a good pasta buffet dinner (thanks Macaroni Grill!) in a great outdoor setting (thanks Embassy Suites!).  This is about as nice of winter weather as I've had in ten years of coming to Phoenix.
This morning teams had training sessions near the hotel before games started in the afternoon.  ODP Championships always prove a tough event as rather than just playing top clubs we play the top players of all states combined from the top clubs we normally play.  It is very obvious population genetics work against as we have a very small population from which to pull the fastest and biggest players, while we go up against teams like So Cal that have thousands of players from San Diego, LA, Riverside, Tijuana... to find the best sixteen players. So we struggled a bit with wins, but we did have some great individual play.  Some teams showed we can compete with the best. The 01 boys had a tough loss to WA but then came back to tie CO 2-2 in a game they certainly could have won.  The 98 boys had two excellent games starting with a loss to CO 0-2 that had a number of close opportunities missed, then they closed the evening with a 1-2 loss against WA, one of the upper level states in Region IV. Though not wins, they are certainly something games to be proud of.
Resting and hydrating tonight for another round of competitive games tomorrow.