Picking up from my last post and leading up to today's victory...
Wednesday night we got our bikes, and like I wrote before, I rode to the store and back. After I got back, Ham and I took part in a little cultural exchange. We were tossing around a football, when some of the Irish girls asked if they could have a go. They had some nice catches, but the best part was the touchdown dance done by one of the Ireland centers on the walkway. While they were learning about American Football, a few of them tried to teach me and Ham how to play hurling (or gaelic football). Both Ham and I tried to hit the ball like it was a baseball and with little success.
Thursday we we had a mild morning before heading into our captain's run. A few folks took advantage of their new found freedom and rode their bikes into Guildford to have lunch. I rode my bike around the corner to the post-office to get a few stamps. We had a brief captain's run on Thursday afternoon just to get a feel for the field and get some more opportunity to fine-tune what we were going to be taking into the match today. It was a novel experience because up until that point, I always took captain's runs for granted in terms of how they flowed. It was an entirely different experience when running it. But it flowed well, and despite some slips because we had to do the run in sneakers, everything looked crisp and fast.
After the captain's run, I came back to my room and did some work, chatted, and otherwise tried to stay relaxed. Other folks napped, watched movies, etc. We had our jersey ceremony that the evening and it was great to see all the friends, family, and fans who came out to support us. It is always awesome when that happens. Then it was over to the Surrey Sports Park for Bridges, PK, and me, as we had to do an interview with Jackie Finlan of Rugby Magazine.
Today was an action packed day. I got up this morning and made my way to breakfast... I normally bypass making the trek from the dorms to the sports park for breakfast, but I had a little extra energy to burn this morning and couldn't sleep any more, so thought I'd go. After breakfast, we rode our bikes over to a field for a brief core session and arousal workout to get everything firing on all cylinders before heading back to the dorms for our final preparations. From there everything seemed to be happening in fast-time. We warmed up and got to the locker room and next thing you know we were following our flag-bearer out onto the field and belting out the National Anthem (with the help of all our fans). Then it was GAME TIME!!!
I would give you the play-by-play recap, but I think Jackie's article for Rugbymag.com or Katie Wurst's press release with USA Rugby do a better job of it, so I'll just stick to the feeling of it. We came out of the gates on fire and got on the board quickly, but everything seemed pretty frenetic. After that opening burst we got a little too crazy and got a series of penalties that had us on the back-foot. We just couldn't keep ball in hand initially, which I attribute to match-day jitters, and everyone trying to force something on every play. We weren't happy with the scoreline heading into half-time and knew we needed to step it up on both offense and defense. And did we. We scored 38 points in the second half because we started to relax and trust each other and just play rugby. It was great. I was bummed to come out of what had become such a pretty game, but glad to have been a part of it and to get a chance to watch some of that beauty as a fan. Speaking of fans... ours rock! We had such an amazing group of supporters there. Between family and friends, as well as the D.C. Furies, who were decked out in Star Spangled Bikinis (there's a pic here), we had the best fans. In fact, Ali Donnelly of Scrumqueens said the USA fans were the loudest of the day. That U-S-A chant definitely picked me up every time I felt a little lagging. 
After the match, Christy and I were rushed off into the media corral where there were more interviews to be done with IRB TotalRugby, RugbyMagazine, Scrumqueens.com, etc. It's definitely more time in front of a camera or mic than I've ever had to face before and it is challenging me to be quick on my feet in thinking of how to respond to, sometimes, difficult questions. 
Then it was into the coldest ice-bath I have ever experienced before a brief pool session to try and loosen up some of the stiffness that will no doubt be at full-force tomorrow. After that we got to go watch some of the other games before dinner (see all the results of the day at the Women's Rugby World Cup site). There was some good rugby being played all around. After dinner we went out and watched the Ireland-England match. Mari and I decided that the best place from which to watch would be between the two fields, so we walked with authority and positioned ourselves 15 m back from the sideline between pitch 1 and 2. It was the best seat in the house - after a bit a few other teammates wised up to our genius and came to join us. The match was hard-fought, with Ireland playing dogged defense. We were really hoping that they could hold England to under 4 tries so they wouldn't get the bonus point, but alas, it was not to happen. England scored their 4th try in the waning moments of the match. But it was a brutal game, so we can only hope that they beat each other up a bit in preparation for our Tuesday match.After the match, we went back to the dorms... Ham ordered pizza, so I enjoyed a little late night snack before I went to my room to write. I originally wasn't going to post tonight, and instead was going to wait until tomorrow, but I still had too much adrenaline from today's win, so thought it was as good a time as any. We really stepped it up today and set the bar for our World Cup endeavor high and I couldn't be more proud of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment