MBAT Day 2

The MBAT is off to a not-so-great start for IMD. It began this morning when our men's soccer team finished its first game against host HEC with a 0-0 tie. Within the first minutes Chilean Jani, one of our best players, was out with a pulled hamstring. Czech Martin and Portuguese Pedro were also injured, although they were able to continue playing. As the day wore on, things didn't improve; we tied Oxford 0-0 and lost to Cambridge 3-0. Consequently we did not advance in the tournament and won't play again tomorrow. As most of you know, I'm no great fan of soccer, but I am a fan of my classmates who have been training hard for this tournament and I feel for their disappointment.

Our basketball team didn't fare any better. Our captain, Ziad, who played professional basketball in Lebanon, was stuck on a lost shuttle bus for two hours and missed our game. While I suspect that the busdriver "got lost" due to a major payoff from RSM, our opponent, the more probable explanation is yet another failure of HEC organization.

In Ultimate Frisbee we did a little better, besting our first opponent with a last-second goal scored by Canadian Ian, the team captain. This goal came at a heavy cost, though, as the assist came from German Daniel, who severley sprained his ankle on the play. He was obviously missed in the next game, which we lost 13-0.

I only played in one sport today, coed beach volleyball 4s. My American ringer and I had both played beach 4s a great deal, but French Olivier and Belarussian Sergei were new to the format. We got off to a very slow start against IESE but finally settled down some. Unfortunately it was too little too late. We lost the first game 15-11 only to realize that that was the ONLY game. Despite the schedule explicitly stating that we would play best-of-three, the rules had been changed at the last minute to mandate single games to 15 with rally scoring. I argued that, if we were going to have a single-elimination tournament with single games and rally scoring, we should at least play to 21 or more. Alas, the decision had already been made. They only had one sand court so were taking drastic measures to speed up the tournament. Bravo, HEC.

It was a rough start to the games but we live to fight another day. After a 90-minute wait for a shuttle bus we headed back to the hotel and drank wine, ate pizza, played ping pong, and relaxed all evening. I'm not going to lie; I play to win and was disappointed in our performance (including my own) today. However, it's hard to dwell on that too much when drinking great wine with great people in great weather. Tomorrow is indoor volleyball, beach volleyball pairs, and . . . TUG OF WAR!

Pictures from today have now been added to my facebook album.