by Bev Wiedlin

The Orange Crush Tournament was located in the Canyon RV Park, Feathery Regional Park Area in Anaheim. The Bay Racers team was excited about being able to camp right at the facility. Makoto, Lisa and baby Kohei opted to stay in a motel with the rationale that they didn't want the baby to keep everyone in the camp grounds awake, but I think they are feeding us a line because we spent two full days with Kohei and he is the world's most perfect baby, I think that clicker training is really being effective with him. Liz also stayed at the motel to help Makoto with transportation and to keep on her work schedule. This ended up being the perfect arrangement because we just phoned Liz our grocery and Starbucks orders in each morning and she arrived bearing gifts for the campers each morning.

Since Liz flew to the tournament and then left directly to Chicago afterwards, Diana and Dawn were in charge of chauffeuring Tessie to the tournament along with Buster, Griff, and Kami. I think they really enjoyed the motor home even though the trip through the grapevine was described as scary. Now they can spend the next 6 months researching and deciding what type of motor home they want to purchase for the future.

Traffic in the LA area is a challenge on Friday afternoons. Steve arrived early and enjoyed an afternoon nap and the rest of the team arrived later. We ended up having a late dinner with the help of the Bark in the Park's grill, because the one critical grill piece was in the last car to arrive.

The campgrounds were very nice including spacious hot showers, so early on it was Jeannine's obsession to plan each day around the most advantageous time to shower. Of course Jeannine also carefully scheduled when the coffee was ready in the coffee maker she had brought and plugged into the RV (through a window). It should be noted that Jeannine definitely has a gift for scheduling, and sticking to those schedules so in situations that require more than a fly by the seat of your pants response, perhaps we should have Jeannine organize us ahead of time.

Racing started at the reasonable hour of 9 a.m. on a sunny Saturday morning and it was the first tournament that I attended where we were not the first race. We still had a bit of a chaotic start. I think it was just a false sense of security to think we had all of that extra time.

The Wave Runners team was made up of Rory, Cedi, Griff, Oliver, Abby and Cooper. They had 5 races throughout the day with 4 heats in each race on Saturday and 4 races with 5 heats each on Sunday. The veterans Rory and Griff had the leadership role of working with all of their inexperienced teammates to create a stable team and they set a great example. As expected the new members made some mistakes, but we also had some unexpected successes.

Cooper started out a little concerned about the other lane with strange dogs during the early warm ups, but when he got his chance to run with the team during the races he did a wonderful job earning both his FD and FDX. Our cheers were so loud for Cooper that he immediately became a tournament favorite. It seemed like each race people were asking me if that new height dog, Cooper, was going to run, because they wanted to see him. Each race he seemed to get faster and more confident so he made the Bay Racers very proud.

Griff made a transition to the micro balls and not only did he catch more cleanly he ran much faster enjoying the feel of that ball totally enclosed in his mouth (Taz is going to be so jealous that Griff is now getting an even smaller ball. Any guesses on how many of them Taz could get in her mouth at once?)

Nique continued her pursuit for the succession of perfect start times. She incorporated a new release with Rory on her lap, Amy/Katy style, with an amazing amount of consistency. Nique really wanted another start time challenge with Diana, but Diana had some excuse about not wanting to chance early starts with Kami due to the heat and longevity of 5 runs. We will hear more of this competition in the future.

Oliver was pretty steady and seemed to be very proud of little brother Cooper. There is all of this talk of a Cowger team, but the only obstacle is figuring out the line up so Lauren can release and catch both Tipper and Cooper in one race.

Abby and Cedi turned in their fastest times of their short careers. Now as soon as those passes are nailed they are going to be hard to beat.

Steve made his debut as a totally competent box loader. We had lots of reruns on Saturday due to dropped balls, Run Outs or early starts and Steve was great at having the right ball in the right spot for the dog barreling down the lane. We had a mix up in the line up during one race on Sunday and Griff went in 2^nd instead of Cedi. Afterwards we asked Steve how in the world he was able to get the right ball in and his initial response was I think I just picked it up mentally. He later said well I saw Griff was going to run so I just put his ball in. That is a fast reaction time.

Wave Runners didn't place on Saturday and Captain Diana stressed that the problem was we had 8 No Finishes out of 20 races. Time wasn't an issue because we had the speed, but we needed to put all of our concentration on finishing those races. Directed goal to work on for Sunday.

Sunday Wave Runners came back stronger. And we finished a solid 3^rd and were even in contention for 1^st going into the last race. Quite an improvement due to the added experience of the first day of racing and the concentration on running clean runs.

Salty Dogs on Saturday ran in the Multi Breed division and as a Regular Team on Sunday. The team was made up of Kami, Katy, Tipper, Pepper, Tessie and Joey. Both days the team raced 4 races with 5 heats in each race.

The big team expectation was the fact that Kami was going to achieve the level of FM during the first race of the day. However there was some discrepancies in the scoring of the points at the Chico Tournament and the NAFA posting of points so there was a possibility that Kami was actually awarded the title based on the Chico tournament. For our purposes we noted the achievement early Saturday morning so celebration and congratulations to Kami and Diana are definitely in order.

Pepper was the newest teammate on this team and she really hit her stride. After the agonizing at practices over those box recall exercises, Pepper decided that it was fun to leave Makoto's side to go get that tasty little ball because she could come back really fast. Since I was box loading I had the wonderful opportunity of watching each dog's expression as they ran toward the box and there was no question that Pepper was having fun. That dog really flies on the trip back to Makoto. Just think how fast she will be when Kohei is big enough to be out there ball shagging for us. It was really great to have both Lisa and Kohei at the tournament. I took a nice family picture so I hope it shows up with this article.

Katy turned in some great times and Amy's biggest challenge was trying to hold on to her because she is so revved up she just wanted to race. New Katy holding technique, Amy just picks her up. Who needs the gym and weights when you can do Katy lifting?

Tipper was totally solid. She just ran her heart enjoying the cheering that is surely always directed at her because everyone knows she is the Queen. The little tastes of baby food are of course an added incentive.

Joey ran a nice solid anchor position pulling out race after race. His only moment of negative reflection was when a dog from the other team ran in and interfered with him coming out on the jumps. Joey came to a dead stop and look on his face clearly said he was totally appalled at such breach of conduct by that lowly dog. He clearly preferred to win his races fair and square.

Tessie turned in the most comic moment of the tournament. Being the only child with the unlimited amount of toys at home there is still this search for something new. After she finished a big race in her lane, she decided it was time to do a little shopping. So she streaked past Liz, who was holding her favorite recall toy, and headed into a camp outside the ring. She snatched up a child's large play ball that was lying unattended and returned to the ring, ball madly hissing in her mouth. She came bounding over the jumps without a misstep. She stopped at the last jump and stood staring at me as if to ask if I would kindly load that ball into the box. I told her to take it back to Liz, so she turned around and ran back totally proud of herself. Of course Liz paid the owners for the ball and Tessie continued to enjoy her prize until it was ripped into tiny little pieces. We might not remember who won the races next year, but we will remember Tessie with that big ball in her mouth.

Salty Dogs ended up going into the last race needing 4 out of 5 wins to pull out a first place. Acting like the pros, with nerves of steel, they did exactly what was needed to achieve their goal. A happy team proudly received their first place awards at the ceremony that night.

The tournament had a number of other positive aspects. The camping environment allowed for hours of socialization and no driving involved so we could exercise our drinking rights. We were able to spend time with team members from other clubs outside of the racing ring. We were able to help Pawdemonium who were running a racing team with only 6 people. And we came away with the solid knowledge that every dog and handler had been successful and improved in some way.

The only negatives were that we missed having Summer, Sherrae, Shelley, and Karen who were not able to make the tournament. We were able to baby poor Taz who had sore feet from too much fun the week before.

Now the challenge is going to be how to reassess all of the teams now that we have another height dog and the big improvements made by everyone. Then we will need to move on to adding the even newer dogs that are nearing competition readiness.

Another chapter in the Bay Racers story