this was yet another packed weekend with what seemed like too much stuff to do. after dinner with thanh and tung on friday, i woke up early on saturday to start the festivities for warren’s bachelor party. it started off with a drive to vallejo where we went to paintball jungle.

paintballing was a lot of fun. it’s been a long while since i went, but we had 12 people in our group. it’s interesting to see the group dynamics at work here. anyway, there were a few moments where it had started to rain pretty hard, but it never really rained while we were playing.

after paintball, we headed back to the city to eat at palomino right off the embarcadero. pretty nice place, i enjoyed the dinner.

we finally headed back home after that, it was quite an exhausting day.

sunday came and went pretty quickly, though. i slept for a good part of it, catching up on the sleep that i had been deprived of earlier. i caught up on a bunch of tv and finally went to play volleyball in the evening. we had a good shot at winning playoffs, but missed it.

this sunday team that i brought together was an incredible amount of fun. not only did i feel that the team really grew together, but it was such a blast. the team humored my random cheers and they were all very cool people. i could not have asked for a better experience. this was my favorite team at JACL so far.

this is the second team that i’ve officially been captain for and i think that i’ve really changed the way that i captain a team. though i do believe that democracy is a good thing, when it comes to team sports, i feel that the presence of a strong leader who makes definitive decisions really helps out quite a bit. i also believe that it is the attitude of the captain that really carries the team. if the captain is down, too competitive, or perhaps unsure of themself then i think it is felt by the team.

i really strove this season to put an emphasis on having fun. we came off on a rocky start in the beginning of the season, but i still had a good time playing with everyone there. i think a large part of the joy comes from staying positive, not being critical of others, and remembering that this is just a game, not life or death.

in previous teams i’ve captain’d, i felt that my leadership wasn’t very strong. i didn’t feel like i really paid attention, either, so i didn’t know how we could improve. i also felt that people just weren’t having fun because we weren’t winning. though it’s true that it is great to win, i would not want to win at the expense of not having fun. i’m just not that competitive and most teams i play on aren’t either.

anyhow, all in all, it was a great season, and i hope that next season will be just as fun.