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Hi there, Hi there, well the soccer tournament part of the games is over as we played our final game this morning, winning in a penalty shoot out vs China. I will come back with some details but I have asked another one of the players to blog and in the interest of representing our bilingual nature, I have asked my new buddy Andreanne Gagne from University de Sherbrooke to post. It has been fun coaching her instead of coaching against her. She will be posting in french today. Ok so I have been a little behind in getting players to share their thoughts and views on the games so I have going to try and have a little blitz over the last few days of the games. This blog will be brought to you by Chelsea Stang of UBC who has had an outstanding tournament thus far. She was also the person who designed our logo seen on our t-shirts ( I hope to post some pics when I return to Montreal) Back again. As the title to this posting says, it appears that we are running out of steam. I think it traces back to our loss to France where we were so close to pulling off a win that would have pushed into the semi's that the let down is still felt. After having our game yesterday postponed following a severe storm that left the field flooded, we have to play our game versus Russia this morning. Due to the condition of fields at the different venues and in the interest of keeping them in shape for tomorrow's games, we have the chance to play at the training facility for Partizan Belgrade a local pro club. Their team was actually training at the same time in preperation for a champions league match next week. Our captain Des Scott and goalie Jackie Dunnet had been ruled out for the balance of the tournament but we were confident that Kristen Funk who had back stopped her Trinity team to a national championship would fill our just fine. Unfortunately, we had a terrible start defensively and left her all alone and we quickly found ourselves down 2-0. We were able to take a goal back following a penalty shot we were awarded but then again gave up a bad goal and went into half time trailing 3-1. At the point, it would have been easy to go through the motions and run out the time but the players stepped on the field and worked hard. We managed 2 goals and tied the game and seemed to have Russia on the run. We managed a few more chances but following a corner kick, Russia scored a 4th goal which turned out to be the winner. We still had 21 minutes to tie the game and felt that if we could tie and go into penalties (there is no overtime in this tournament), we liked our chances of winning. The rest of the game mirrored our tournament, hard work, determination, but some bad luck, tough calls against us and lack of ability to finish. Russia added a fifth goal in injury time. Tomorrow we play China again for 7th and 8th place and it will be tough to beat them again but I am sure we will get a great effort from the team as they have shown throughout the tournament. Seeing how close we can come in game, it makes one wonder how we could do as a team if we had just a little more time to prepare as a group.
Well after almost a year of preparing for the FISU games as a staff, we have 5 full days and 2 games remaing in this adventure. We play Russia later today (5:30 pm local time) and a win would put is in a game for 5th and 6th place against either Brazil or China (again!). A few days removed from the disappointment of our loss against France, we now get refocused on trying to finish strong and match Canada's best ever result of 5th place. It should be noted however that those 2 fifth places finishes were out of 6 teams (1993) and 12 teams (2005). Should we be able to finish out with 2 wines, we would have accomplished something special especially considering the reality under which our team is selected and brought together. As I had previously written, a majority of teams against whom we compete have been preparing for more than 6 months and some for a year, not to mention that they are fully subsidized by their national sport federations. For example, France has been training since last June, they do not pay anything and have 5 senoir national team players on their roster while our players must pay their way to these games. We the chance to have some additional support and time to prepare, we feel strongly that we could have progressed further in this tournament. France appears to be the strongest team so far and may end up winning it all. If they do, I think our team can hold their heads high about having been on the brink of eliminating them. Well it is with much sadness that I must write that our run for a potential medal has come to en end. This evening we lost to France 4-1 in a game where the score truly does not reflect how the game went. Their last 2 goals were scored in injury time as we were pushing trying to tied up the game. Hi again ! I am back on Sunday July 5th and we are the night before the big quarter finals versus France. I will come back and some thoughts about our trek through the games to this point but for now, once again, we will have some guest blogging. Our two youngsters, Jil Dietrich of Trinity Western University and Brie Shaw of Queens will tag team blog today after the success of Fro and Jackie the previous time. These two are our youngest players and can provide some interesting points of view.... Yo yo yo, hanging out here in the Big B, chillin' with the ladies of Canada soccer.... ok I think I am spending way too much time with the ladies of the team that they are rubbing off on me :-) The food here is absolutely impecable, if you're into undercooked eggs, milk that tastes like powder, and chicken that may in fact not even be chicken. Its actually not THAT bad, but I can speak on everyone's behalf when I say we've all had better. They've come up with some interesting menu items for us. I think my favorite is the "ham" they served for breakfast, which almost made Liz (one of our assistant coaches) throw up on the spot. The breakfast hall gets PACKED in the morning, but our coaches clearly planned for this before we got here because they have so graciously allowed us to wake up a WEEEEE bit earlier than everyone else in the village so we can avoid the lines. By a "wee" bit early, I mean they make us wake up at 630..... thanks guys, thanks. It is probably appropriate to follow that comment by sharing with you all how EXHAUSTED we all are, and have been since we were in France. I've never napped so much in my life. Could it be the early mornings!? noooooo......... My "partner in crime" has now so elegantly graced me with her presence, I'd like to introduce you all to the god-like specimen we call Fro. She's known for a little move she calls the "Frodo-smash." The move entails a high speed collision between Fro and the unsuspecting victim, whereby due to the laws of physics (and more specifically, momentum), the victim often gets projected meters away from where the original impact first took place, leaving Fro standing on her feet giggling (insert evil laugh here). Seriously though, she's our leading scorer thus far in the tournament, and interestingly enough, she plays center back. I'm investigating the possibility of changing her position to forward... Hor Hay doesn't think its such a good idea. Now.... lets discuss the gypsies. We're told they live in shantees, which are glorified piles of garbage on the side of the road (a little bit hidden by trees), and directly en route to the cafeteria (we've even seen the roofs). Their true identity has been covered by the Serbian police (they put fences up so we can't see them), but we're all fairly sure that they do in fact exist. This is a lie, we KNOW they exist because I (Jack-attack) saw one of them defecating under a bridge but on a pile of garbage on the way back from training the other day. That was special, but not as special as the sheer white dress that exposed a LIIITTTLE bit too much of the ladie's upper regions in the mall the same day. They dress "different" here. Chelsea (another fellow musketeer) saw a wonderful demin/leopard print bating suit ensemble at that very same mall on that very same day. We're brining a whole new vision of fashion back to Canada. Next on the list.... PANCAKES, which are in fact CREPES, which are in fact BAD FOR YOU because they are filled with cholocate and cookie crumbles. Fro and Jackie (further identified as the dynamic duo) spotted Hor-Hay sneaking one too many pancakes just the other day. Since the dynamic duo have come to truly care for little Hor Hay over these past two weeks, we felt as though it was in his best interest to inform him of the adverse side effects of too many pancakes. They do in fact go "straight to the money maker".... a.k.a your gluteus maximus. While we were on the topic of health and hygeine with dear Hor Hay, Jackie so graciously noticed/pointed out that young Hor Hay needed to clip his dragon like toe nails. This was done promptly by the next sunrise. Thanks to Jackie's attention to detail, we no longer have to cover our eyes when Hor Hay exposes his feet. Lets talk about Graham. Graham.... Graham.... Graham..... most of us (meaning, all of us) are finding it challenging to distinguish the sarcasm from the pure emotion. We all suspect that Graham either permanently has something stuck in his teeth, or he secretly has braces and doesn't want to show us his pearly whites, due to the simple fact that even when he finds something RIDICULOUSLY funny, he makes a conscious effort not to smile and laugh, but to simply say "that was really funny Jorge." IN FACT, Graham taught us an important lesson today. Upon a "slip" of the tongue by Frodo, he informed us of the interesting fact that shit is actually in the bible. How cool is that?! We would talk about Liz, but that's going to take up a whole other page and we figure you might be bored. SOOOOO, its been an honor, nay, a privilege to share in this moment with you all. We want you to know that we're taking great care of dear Hor Hay, and we see him not as a father figure, but a grandfather. If we end up in prison in Singapore because he not so secretly just informed us that he is changing our flight home, please call KIM or HOWIE SMITH orrr MAMA FRO for instructions to retrieve us. Thank you for your undivided attention. Until next time. One Love, The Dynamic D
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AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
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