All Request Saturday #1

As promised, Happy Birthday Milou! You are officially old. And as long as you are older than me, I will consider you such. Aka. Forever. Enjoy :)

On to all request Saturday. I only received one question, so today's post is going to be short and sweet.

Ola hijo mio. Soy en Mexico ahora entonces hablo en espagnol. Mi pregunta para tu Sabado requisito es: Jo sais que tu nomalmente adivinar que es el mejor competicion para cada tournamiento. Que piensas par esta competicion. Los Mexicanos premiere tambien, ou outros?? Su padre.

After writing about the language barrier, and my struggle with Spanish, this question was conveniently written in said language. Thanks Dad. With a little help from Jessi (He and mom both say your spanish needs work by the way), I've managed to translate it as follows:

Hello my son. I am in Mexico so I will speak in Spanish. My question for all request Saturday is: I know that you normally predict who your strongest competition will be in most tournaments. Who do you think it is at this competition? Are the Mexicans strongest, or someone else? Your Father. - Don Saxton

First I'll fill everyone in on my dad's status. He is also currently at a NORCECA tournament in Mexico, coaching a Canuck Club U17 team. I don't have any info on their status, but good luck Canuck! Or in this case, good luck Canada!

Now, to answer the question, I have to say that the strongest opponents here are Cuba and USA. I'm not sure the reason, but Mexico did not enter into this event, or they would be up there as well.
Cuba consists of two tall athletic young athletes with good ball control. So far this tournament they have not faced any opponents who have challenged them. Puerto Rico should have challenged them today, but they had a little hiccup, and ended up losing earlier in the tournament.
USA consists of two veteran athletes from San Diego who play a little on the AVP tour. They're a scrappy team that will make anyone work hard for any point, and find ways to score even when it doesn't look like they will. We played the Americans today, and after a tough back an forth match, we pulled out the three set win to put us into the Semi Final tomorrow. I expect the Americans to battle back in order to face the Cubans tomorrow in the other semi final.

So far things are going well for us, we will still have a tough battle in tomorrow's semi against whoever we face. But I hope to see either the Cubans or Americans in tomorrow's final.

Cheers,
Ben