Canary Islands and Super World League Finals

I know its been a long time since I have blogged and Im sorry..The daily grind of our training does not seem exciting enough to blog about for me. However, we are getting ready to leave on saturday morning for the Canary Islands..Can you believe that?? I hope that they are everything Im imagining them to be..It seems such an exotic destinations and such a random place for a water polo tournament.
However, we are all business even if its a great location. We are coming into our last big tournament that will give us a little more information about ourselves and our opponents as we prepare for Beijing. We are all very excited to play real games against real opponents. So make sure you check back june 10 as we open up the tournament against Australia. The format of the tournament is a round robin between the six teams with the best two records playing for first, etc..wish us luck and follow our path...
Go team USA!!!

The Billies

April 15, The Beverly Hilton
I was invited to attend an awards ceremony put on by the Women's Sports Foundation honoring several media outlets..They were honoring media and the positive portrayals of women. They invited several hollywood celebrities as presenters; Master P, Tony Gonzalez, Sharon Osbourne, Michele Kwan and the hit of the night was Elton John's performance at the end..
I was so excited to be invited to this amazing event...I met several cool athletes and I even walked a "mini red carpet"..all in all hollywood and the women's sports foundation know how to put on an event for a great cause..If you have money to burn and your looking for a cool foundation to donate to please consider the Women's Sports Foundation....

adventures of the great wall

Amazing...If i had to describe the great wall of china to anyone with one word it would be AMAZING!!!!!!To think it was man made...It was hard to just walk up the already built great wall..imagine building it...Here are a few pictures of the hike up the great wall..Our tour was limited so we only climbed for about 40 minutes and then raced back down..WE were the ultimate tourist and bought t-shirts and took lots of pictures..I will put up a team picture later..If your ever in China come see part of the great wall you will not regret it...

Who knew?? from tecalitlan, mexico to commerce CA

check out this story "http://universalsports.nbcsports.com/water+polo"
Hopefully, water polo can get more coverage for the upcoming olympics..We, team USA have supporters in different walks of life..in more than one language. Maybe the different mediums will provide more options to watch water polo in beijing via television...


Team USA played a game in commerce on january 27 and we had a full house..In attendance were Patty's parents and my mom and uncle all from the little "pueblito" of tecalitlan that has produced many water polo players...what was in that water???

Let the New year begin!!!!

We started the new year with a training trip to the land down under...Our first destination was Perth, Australia and finished the trip off in Sydney, Australia.
This training trip consisted of lots of training and 5 official games at various locations in Australia..We had a few beach workouts that provided us with new war stories to tell friends and families...During a swim session at the beach half the team was stung by jellyfish..can you believe it....luckily no one is allergic and we survived...In sydney, the australians tried to get us off our game and scheduled a game in a playing field located in a bay..Bay, you say, its true..the water was not clear and it was very salty..It was a fun bonding experience..we were out of our comfort zone but we were still able to perform..that is what our program is all about...
Unfortunately, we didnt win any of the games on the road..we tied 2 games and lost three...But dont you worry...we collected lots of information and we are so competitive that this will get us through the next month of training....

Semi Final

We played Russia in the semi final of the 4 nations cup...They had beat us soundedly a couple days ago so we were excited for the rematch..It was a hard fought game..We were able to control the game with good ball control on offense and fairly good defense..We are still struggling with our 5on6 and 6on5...We were only able to convert 2 of 6 on 6on5 and a 5m...Russia was able to covert 5for 9...With two big 5on6 saves in the last part of the 4th quarter...they game was a high scoring game ending 12-10

figee 1, villa 2,golda 2,cardenas 2,steffans 2, gregorka 1,van norman 2

We play Australia in the final tomorrow at 1130 am est...

Shoot out!!!!

We beat Australia in a shoot out....
The game began with lots of intensity and aggresiveness from both teams..The rivalry between Australia and the US has grown with the success of both teams..We tend to meet up in lots of knockout games..
All I remember from the game is being down 7-4 going into the 4th quarter..I actually got to watch a lot of the game because I was majored by the end of the second quarter..To start of the fourth quarter we came out with two unaswered goals..We finally started focusing and listening to the coaching staffs instructions and we were patient and broke down their defense...We had an opportunity to win the game in regulation but missed a 5 m...So we played defense after that and went into a shoot out..One of our shooter's hit the bar and Betsey responded buy blocking one of the 5m..When it came down to both teams last shooters australia's captain sailed it over the goal and Petri without a second thought nailed the game winning penalty...It was such an exciting game..We should a lot of character coming back from the loss yesterday and getting back on track in the 4th quarter today..
petri 2, wenger 2,golda 2,cardenas 1, gregorka 1
final score 8-8--after shoot out 12-11...