WBV Women Shine at the Motherlode

A number of teams made the trip to Aspen for the annual Motherlode Volleyball Classic during Labor Day weekend. We're pleased to provide local perspective on the event, thanks to Linda Byington, WBV Women's Player Representative, and Helen Farr.

Linda teams with Jane Gibb

I played the Motherlode this year with Jane Gibb, Jake's wife. Years ago, when Jane lived in Utah, we played together. We won on Saturday which kept us in the winner's bracket, and ended up finishing 9th in the tournament. We were really happy to tie the best previous finish by a Utah team.


We went out with a bunch of other players and enjoyed the restaurants and night life of Aspen. It's a great town and they put on an amazing tournament, drawing more than 300 teams, including a number of other teams from Wasatch Beach: Helen and Traci, Diane Gordon playing with a partner from Denver, Derran Cannon and Brad Collins, Matt Gordon and Daniel Delanhese, Tobin Reynolds and Dave Tally.

We hung out and supported each other. It was fun having several Utahans in the tourney, and we made friends with a lot of players and fans from across the country.

Helen and Traci - now it really is their favorite!

Traci and I loaded up Linda's Corolla on the friday of Labor Day weekend to head for our favorite volleyball tournament of the year in Aspen, Colorado.



We've been to the Motherlode a couple of times and really love the beautiful scenery around Aspen and the town full of volleyball athletes and fans. There were 34 teams in the Women's Open division this year.

Two years ago we faced a tough team that eliminated us from the tournament, giving us a 9th place finish. This year that same team, Colleen Hunter and Meghan House of St. Louis, won the Barefoot Wine AVPNext Championship Cup and played in the San Francisco AVP main event. We were so happy to beat them in the second round this year in Aspen! Pics of action from that match follow.





Winning that match set us up against the number one seeded team - Paige Davis and Janelle Ruen. The team plays professionally in the AVP and won the Motherlode last year. We played great and beat them in two straight sets! That match earned us a lot of crowd support.


On Monday (Labor Day), we played a tough team from Texas, but beat them pretty easily in two sets. Because of the cross over format, we then played Paige and Janelle again in the semi-finals. They played much better and pulled out the first set 25-23, then won the second 21-14. We played our hearts out and had a great time on the court and off.

We were thrilled to finish the tournament tied for third. We won some money and we were the only team in the top four that was not made up of professionals.

Congratulations to Linda and Jane for matching the previous best Utah team finish, to Traci and Helen for putting the Pros on notice with an awesome third place finish and to the other players and teams from Wasatch Beach who played in the 2009 Motherlode.