Since 2006 will be the 10th year anniversary of our King and Queen Tournaments, I wanted to share with everyone a little history behind the tournaments.

The King & Queen outdoor volleyball tournament was originally the brainchild of Wendy Coates. She wanted to offer a tournament that was less stressful and geared more towards fun than the regular doubles tourneys of those days. She got together a group of friends at the NC National Guard Armory on Reedy Creek Road in Raleigh, NC, and held the first King and Queen tournament way back in June of ’96. There were a few things that set those early tourneys apart from others of the day:

• There was just one single division.
  
  
• A less popular "rule" was that if you missed a serve on game point, you had to do a shot of Jose Cuervo tequila. That's one rule most of our players don't miss very much. (Then again, I'm sure there are some who would love to have it brought back!)
  
  
• One "rule" that remains to this day, was the introduction of the "wild card." This was a once-per-game 4th play allowed on the ball if called before the third play.
  
  

I really enjoyed the concept of the K & Q and took up the torch when Wendy decided she'd had enough. I've made a few adjustments here and there through the years to get to our current state:

♦  In ’97 we started offering 2 divisions ("B/BB" and "A/Open") and then went to 3 divisions in ’00 despite fears of the Y2K bugs

♦  We were playing old school rules (side out scoring, no let serves, etc) in those first few years

♦  In ’01 we switched over to rally scoring as well as began allowing let serves

In the year 2000, we moved into the 90’s and launched our initial website. Troy Plavec was the creator of that first version. I still have retina damage from the intense colors he used. Troy handed off the webmaster duties to Mike Havazelet in ’02 and Mike spiced things up (and toned the primary colors down) for a couple of years.

Forrest Stroud took over in ’04 and has really spiffed up the website, including adding online registration for all tourneys. We’ve had close to 45,000 visits to the front page of the site in the last 2 years, and the numbers keep climbing. I also started a Yahoo email group in February of ’02 to help promote local volleyball as well as spread the word on tourneys. That list now has over 500 members and continues to grow.

Over the last few years, we’ve tried to improve the tournament experience for everyone. Some of the things we’ve added:

♦   A points system was implemented in ‘04 to track player performance. In the old days, people were automatically forced up if they won a tourney. We feel this new system will help keep things balanced and competitive for everyone.

♦  Reverse Co-ed tourneys were added to the schedule in ’04.

♦  Music was also added during the ’04 season. This coming season we will allow people to make requests instead of just playing the radio all day. You can email your requests or send us your MP3 files to be played on the day of the tournament.

♦  2006 will mark the debut of new Sand and Juniors tourneys to the vh1vball.com schedule.

Cheers!

Vaughn Hastings