After a pre-game breakfast we headed over to the Heden Center to watch some of the other teams play.  As we watched them I could feel the excitement build in our team and when Martina turned to me and said coach, “I am ready to play!”, I knew the players were fired up to take on Västanfors IF (Fagersta, Sweden) in their opening match. 

 

After a brief lunch we took a bus to our field. They had just reopened two fields and as luck would have it one was turf which we were scheduled to played on - all those long hours of practicing on Peter Houlihan Field were really going to pay off! What a match. Our defenders smothered their forwards and did a terrific job building the attack from the back. The midfielders move the ball from right to left and the amount of give and goes were countless. Katie, on an assist from Lauren, put us ahead 1-0 in the first half. In the second half we continued to enjoy the run of play and maintained long spells of possession. Rachel cemented the match with our second goal which Hannah assisted.  The girls played extremely well and were overjoyed with their 2-0 victory.

After dinner we went to the Opening Ceremonies. As we walked around the stadium there were teams from different countries yelling and chanting their country names. The girls found another USA team with drums and they chanted USA! USA! the entire time. As we walked along more teams from the United States joined us! It was amazing! There were 55,000 people in the stadium, all representing their countries. I can’t even begin to describe what it was like. Fireworks, chanting, dancing, it’s truly something you have to experience for yourself. During the festivities Katie turned to me and said, "Coach, this is the best time of my life!”, and that pretty much sums up how all the girls felt about today.

 

Tomorrow we take on the hardest team in our group....wish us luck!

 

Coach Yvette

 
The Blaze show their pride