It’s a different tournament this year. There are fewer courts this year: five instead of eight. This means fewer teams in the building, so fewer players, fewer parents — reduced risk, in short.

They won their first two games in straight sets. They didn’t have much problem with either team.

As often happens, though, the third team was a different story. Our girls (and single boy — long story) lost the first set something like 25-22. Not a devastating loss, but a loss nonetheless.

They started the second set strong and before we knew it, our team was up 19-12. “Surely this is a done deal.” Nope. They ended up losing 26-24, which means in the second half of the game, they were consistently outscored 2-1.

It’s a question of experience, of gelling together as a team. It’s only their second tournament, and many of the points they lost were from silly, unforced errors. They’ll weed those out with time, with some experience.

And the Boy got his soccer uniform for the spring season.