Beach Diaries, Women's (Ratcliff) 8/23/11
Kath Ratcliff
Posted: August 23, 2011 05:02 PM
Hello from Lignano Sabbadioro!
First, the good news: the U.S. teams have gone 24 and 0! Our first game of the tournament was yesterday morning against Belgium. They certainly had been practicing and it showed as they gave us a game right off the bat. Fortunately we were able to overcome some jet lag, some tiredness, and our lack of familiarity with each other (and the sun!) in order to put them away in the second half.
Our next game, against France, went much better from the start - we came out hard and it helped us keep momentum all through the game. Trudy organized a team USAS mixer for Tuesday night and word on the street is that Marie and Julie dominated the party. I believe Sally from mixed cleaned up at poker too! So, to sleep, and Finland in the AM...
We had heard really good things about them. They'd been practicing, they'd been playing together forever and have great chemistry, they throw amazing i/os, etc etc. So we came out tough and ready for a battle. They pushed every point and really made us work for each goal, but we came out on top. Next up, a seven hour break till Spain!
We got to watch the men's team play India and the mixed team play Currier Island before coming back together for warm ups. As it turns out, the Italians use a lot of beach, so we've really had to adapt to do mini-warm up drills. So far it seems like it worked okay as we came out and won against Spain pretty handily, including the best catch of the tournament in any division by Megan and multiple end zone layout D’s by Vegas.
Tonight, we cheered on the masters team in the arena, which seems pretty awesome! We are all looking forward to tomorrow nights game!
Thanks to you for your support!
Team USA Beach Diaries
Some members of Team USA will be submitting diary entries during the event to keep everyone posted on their experience in Italy.