Journal Entry #1

July 19^th 10:55pm

Our journey to Macau, China for the Youth World Championships began over a year and a half ago as we chose the team for the NORCECA Championships. That being said, it’s hard to believe that we’re finally here.

The last leg of this experience began a week and a half ago on Friday July 8^th, when the training team of 18 athletes showed up at the OTC. Eight days later, we took the 12 chosen players to the Colorado Springs airport to begin our travel to China. With only five practices under our belt after having made cuts, the players and the staff were anxious to get to China to finish the work that we started.

Over the three days prior to leaving Co Springs, we enforced a jet lag program with the players and the staff. Macau, China is 12 hours ahead of Co Springs time. Therefore, we stayed up until 2,3, and 4am on Thursday, Friday and Saturday respectively. I can honestly say that this was a lot tougher than it sounds, especially when it’s not by choice. None the less, we knew that it was necessary and would help us get on ‘China time’ quicker.

Erikka and Alix Klineman went ahead of the group on another flight due to some scheduling issues, and would meet up with us in LA. Unfortunately, they ran into some problems on their connection through Las Vegas and had a delay of an hour and a half. Apparently, it was too hot to take off (115 degrees). Luckily, that put them at LAX at the same time that the group came in. We met up with Kris Nulik, the same trainer that we used last year at the NORCECA tournament, at LAX as well.

With a 6 hour layover, the group went straight down to check our luggage in for the international flight so we could head over to Taylor Caricos’ house for snacks. We ran into some trouble trying to check in that much earlier than our flight, but finally made it out of the airport by 8:30pm. The Carico’s had rented the group a small coach bus and before we knew it we were eating Mexican in style with all four sets of California players parents and some of the Carico’s family friends. They put up quiet a spread for us and we ate like we might not eat any American food again for a while!

The next leg of our trip would stand to be the most challenging. According to our jet lag program, we were to stay awake for the 1^st 6 hours of the plane ride to Incheon, Korea and then we would be allowed to sleep for the last 6 hours. Rachel Holloway and I were fortunate enough to get exit row seats, and this would stand to be both positive and negative. Most of us made it through to about 5pm (Macau time) pretty easily, but it was down hill from there. After struggling to hold my eye’s open while reading my new book, The Narrows by Michael Connelly, I finally decided that I was going to have to get creative. So, I solicited help from Rachel and Kim Kuzma. Five rounds into spades, the Wedding Date came on and the creativity got a small break.

Three chapters of my book (only one of which I remember), 5 games of spades, 1 plane movie, 5 games of spades, 12 games of hangman and the worlds longest game of war later, we still have 1 hour to kill before we were allowed to sleep. I can honestly say that I can’t even remember a time that I ever want to sleep so badly in my life. The best/worst part was that I definitely wasn’t the only one. All of us ended up having to wake the person next to us up or do rounds to make sure that no partners were sleeping. We had a few who were less than happy to have to come back to reality. When 9:30pm rolled around, we were all out for the count.

We continued this trend in the Incheon airport and finally got back some of the sleep hours our bodies were desperately craving. By the time we boarded the plane from Incheon to Hong Kong, most of us just couldn’t wait to finally get there. That flight ended up being just over 3 hours and served to be our 1^st true opportunity to eat asian food. The only thing I’ll say is that I wasn’t too keen on the green cake. Not just the frosting, but the whole cake. It truly takes a lot for me to turn down dessert, but I had no problem with it this time.

After waiting another 3 hours in the Hong Kong airport, we finally got on the boat that would take us to our new home. 1 hour later, we met up with our hosts for the tournament, Wendy and Stephanie and made our way to the Hotel Royale. Surprisingly enough, no one lost any luggage making our sleep schedule the most eventful part of our trip thus far, which was fine with me!

As we pulled up to our hotel, we were greeted by bellmen and an exquisite lobby. I had a feeling this was going to be a lot different than the El Portal that we stayed in for NORCECA, in Puerto Rico. I was right.

We are on the 12^th floor and there are two to each room. We all have tv’s, air conditioning, and bottled water in our rooms. Not to mention the fact that the hotel has a pool and a workout facility (I’ll come back to that part) and a killer pastry bar in the lobby. Not too shabby for the Las Vegas of China.

We all made ourselves at home and ate our first meal in the restaurant of the hotel. This was supposed to be lunch. First we were served a salad, then a soup, then a fish dinner (which was excellent), then a chicken dinner and finally dessert. Yes, this was our lunch. All of the food was great, but would serve to eventually add 15 lbs to the group (mostly the staffJ , if we continued to eat like this while were are here. So, Erikka asked scale down the meals to only one appetizer and one main course. By the time we finished practice and headed back for dinner, we couldn’t help but struggle to put down any more food! Not a bad problem to have.

The day ended with Kris and I desperately trying to figure out how to turn off one of the lights in our room so that we could go to bed. Finally, we called down and security came up to help us out. Believe it or not, the light in the hallway has a switch on the night stand. Who would have thought? Certainly not either one of us at that time!

This morning I awoke to alarm clock at 7:30am and I made my way down to the workout facility. There were about a dozen men and women already in the pool doing laps at that hour. Since I didn’t bring a swimsuit, all I could think was that I hoped and prayed that just had a treadmill. Just a treadmill, that’s all I wanted. No such luck. They did, however, have a three-exercise nautical weight system and 3 sets of dumbbells. Cardio was definitely going to be an issue. I did what I could on the machines they had (none were electrically operated and most look like I could find a duplicate back in the old weight room I used when playing at UW-Parkside), and was thankful to talk with Erikka at about 8:30am. She had gone running outside (did I mention that it’s about 100 degrees here with 100% humidity???) and found a park where she ran into what she says was "more old people than she’s ever seen". So, I figured I would call it a day and try that out tomorrow morning.

Breakfast was a spread like you can only imagine, given the food situation from the night before. They had everything from omelets, to soup and even oatmeal. They call it the "Americanized breakfast buffet". I could hardly believe our options after all the stories I heard about our YNT team eating peanut butter and jelly every day two years ago for the World Championships in Poland. Guess I got lucky.

This mornings practice went better than last nights, but we still aren’t up to par yet. Chalk it up to travel or numerous other things, but we need to get better every day. The staff made this a clear point to the team after the practice.

Wendy and Stephanie took us out into the city for about an hour and a half (all we could stand in this kind of heat), and we got our first opportunity to see what China is all about. Nike and Mizuno are very big here. In fact, there is a shoe store on almost every block! The prices are comparable to that of the US, but these were also some of the more prominent stores, as well. Later on in the shopping excursion, we made our way into some of the "bargaining shops". The California girls came out of the trip in style, beating the rest of the group back to the hotel (unintentionally).

Tonight we had our first scrimmage with the Macau team. We got to play in the Dome (about 20 minutes from our hotel). It’s a brand new, amazing facility that reminds me of a mini version of the Kohl Center in Madison, WI. Without an expectation coming in, both facilities that we’ve played in, the other one within earshot of our hotel are phenomenal!

The scrimmage tonight was as close to a real match as we could get. They announced the starting line-ups, used real officials and we even had fans. Well, Macau had fans. By the end of the match, they were our fans.

Macau is a first year representative at the World Championships and it showed. Being host the tournament, they get #1 seed in the tournament. After seeing them tonight, clearly they will not sustain that seeding. We tried a couple of different line-ups tonight but were able to pull out the match easily with scores of 25-19, 25-2 and 25-15. Macau played hard, but were just simply outmatches by USA and it’s average height in the line-up of 6’. Even though it was an easy match, it gave us our first chance to get on a true competition floor and see how it was going to feel.

After a long couple of days, we were all anxious to get to bed tonight. Tomorrow will be a similar day to today as we practice at 10am and then we will scrimmage an Italian club team at 6pm. We were supposed to scrimmage Russia, but they won’t get in until late tomorrow.

I think everyone is adjusting well, and I am anxious to see us get even better in practice tomorrow and hopefully get challenged tomorrow night in the scrimmage.