AURORA | Weather has taken its toll on the Eaglecrest Invitational volleyball tournament, which went through a second restructuring Friday.
The annual tournament originally had 16 teams entered and was slated to be played over two days until massive rainfall created dangerous travel and scheduling problems for several of the teams involved.
On Thursday, Eaglecrest condensed the tournament to just Saturday and then had to restructure again when conditions wouldn’t allow schools from up the hard-hit north — Eaton, University, Platte Valley and Roosevelt — to attend, dropping the tournament to a total of 12 teams.
The current setup has three pools of four teams each, with Aurora’s top three teams — Grandview, Eaglecrest and Cherokee Trail — holding the No. 1 position in each pool. Hinkley is the No. 4 seed in Pool II headed by Eaglecrest, while Aurora Central is the No. 4 seed in Cherokee Trail’s Pool III.
Pool play begins at 8 a.m. Saturday, with crossover semifinals scheduled for 3 p.m. and 4:15 p.m. Third-place matches are slated for 5:30 p.m., with championship matches in each of three brackets set for roughly 7 p.m.
Eaglecrest is the defending champion, as coach Tanya Bond’s team defeated Patty Childress and Grandview in last season’s title match. Terry Miller’s Cherokee Trail squad finished third.
2013 EAGLECREST INVITATIONAL VOLLEYBALL TOURNAMENT
Pool I (West Gym): No. 1 Grandview, No. 2 Mountain Vista, No. 3 C.S.C.S., No. 4 Denver East; Pool II (East Gym): No. 1 Eaglecrest, No. 2 Littleton, No. 3 Faith Christian, No. 4 Hinkley; Pool III (East Gym): No. 1 Cherokee Trail, No. 2 Pine Creek, No. 3 Legacy, No. 4 Aurora Central
Pool play — 8 a.m.: Pool No. 2 vs. Pool No. 4; 9 a.m.: Pool No. 1 vs. Pool No. 3; 10:15 a.m.: Pool No. 3 vs. Pool No. 2; 11:30 a.m.: Pool No. 1 vs. Pool No. 4; 12:45 p.m.: Pool No. 4 vs. Pool No. 3; 2 p.m.: Pool No. 2 vs. Pool No. 1
Bracket play — 3 p.m.: Bracket No. 1 vs. Bracket No. 4; 4:15 p.m.: Bracket No. 2 vs. Bracket No. 3; 5:30 p.m.: Loser vs. Loser; 7 p.m.: Winner vs. winner
