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Thursday, 13 July 2006 |
Game on - By Rasmus Bonde Stouby
See pictures from Detroit here
Running laps at 6.30 in the morning is not my favorite pastime. No sir. Nevertheless, the life of the pro athlete demands it and so I must abide. I will not resort to complaining. No. Not even when I repeatedly trip on my laces or balls bounce off my helmet because my vision is blurred by lack of sleep.
Well, I found out you wake up eventually. When driving back to the motel everybody normal is on their way to work, just starting their day. In fact, other guests at the Super 8 were still making an effort to enjoy the complimentary breakfast when we returned sweaty and wide awake.
Being up that early made me feel like I had this huge advantage over everybody else in the world who had just gotten out of bed. A huge advantage that lasted all the way to the room, until I decided to fall asleep and not wake up before early afternoon. Most of the team made a similar decision.
Later on and feeling refreshed, our four van convoy set on a course for Comerica Park in downtown Detroit, home of the Detroit Tigers. Our well-connected coach knows the COO of the Tigers (he coached his son), so we had a nice tour of the stadium.
It was a wonderful opportunity for the team to mess around and crack bad jokes with the tour guide, Jill. While she wasn't sure if the press box food was safe, she was sure that we could all fit in the stadium elevators, and she knew this because she did it with a hockey team last week.
"You did it with a hockey team?" was the mature remark here, and sure enough half the team asked her at the top of their lungs.
The rest of the day meant more relaxing. Some of the guys went to a lacrosse equipment store (we don't have those in Denmark. In fact, we can't buy lacrosse equipment anywhere but online). They returned happy and exhilarated, like Iowa housewives returned from a shopping spree on New York's 5th Avenue.
Our day got even better when the official national team uniforms arrived. They are sweet.
Of course the biggest event of the day was the scrimmage against a local all-star team called the Serpents. We had been told that it was a high school team with some college players on it. Well, it turned out that even though I am sure they have all gone to high school at some point, it was many years ago. Several of them had graduated from big name colleges such as Princeton, Maryland and Harvard.
Before the game, Coach Cone told our squad that "today we are not even going to count the score. It is a practice match. We are here to learn."
The match was a bit unusual in the way that our coach would ask the Serpents to take a guy off the field, because we would like to play man up for a while. "Ok," they would say, and send a guy off. It was like a Jedi mind trick or something. I hope it works in London.
Regardless of the fact that it was a friendly match, they still managed to beat us by the unfriendly score of 16-4 (sorry coach, I counted!). It was a result which we were not too concerned with, however. It was our first match as a team in over a year and at no point in the match did we roll over and give up. It was bone-crunching (our bones mostly).
We found out a great deal about the team. A lot of players got time on the field to figure out their form and get a feel for being out there against an opponent that moves (a lot!) faster than what we are used to in the Danish league (two teams, as you might remember).
Also, we might have found our face-off guy. Martin Baadsgaard, a thirty-something, takes face-offs for Ballerup Bandits back home and stepped up to X about ten times. He won more than half of them, helping out the offense a lot.
"The offense is the most consistent we've ever had. Our goalie is outstanding. The team in general is up to speed with where we were last summer," Coach Cone said, but he also had a bit of criticism.
"We are sloppy in transition. We need to be tighter, smarter and communicate more."
This was a point defensive coach Dave Piechowski agreed with:
"The transition D is... spotty," he said and laughed. "It's less than expected. The settled D is alright. We will make some significant adjustments in training tomorrow so we should do better in the next game."
That concluded Tuesday for the majority of us. Some of our younger players went to a nearby bowling alley, had some drinks, and returned to Super 8 with the desire to throw up. And so they did.
Morning practice tomorrow is at nine, so that's nice. We will be warming up for our second match against the Serpents tomorrow night.national team. It will probably be a close match. |
