Day 2- Versus Spain

Today was another late game.  Most of us had worked out the majority of our nerves in our first game, so people seemed a bit more relaxed at breakfast.  We followed a similar routine today as we did yesterday, with some relaxation time, video review, and creating a game plan for our game against Spain.

We arrived a little early at the pool to cheer on the USA Men who were playing Luxembourg.  They won 16-1!  Congrats boys!!

After the men's game was over, we put on our suits and then did our team stretches, breathing exercises and in water warm up.  We did our team cheer and did a little motivational talk from our Vice Captain and Birthday Girl Laura, and the word of the day from Captain Katrina.   Then we were ready to line up for the national anthem and pennant exchange.

We started the game strong, but there was a lot of back and forth.  Spain maintained possession the majority of this half.  We were comfortable with that, because they were not making strong attacks on our goal.  Our defenders and goalies are solid, and our forwards were doing a good job keeping the attacks away.  We ended the first half tied 0-0.

During half time we talked about turning our turnovers and pass interceptions into faster breaks, so we worked on that and had a lot better counter attacks.  Eventually we scored our first goal was about 7 minutes into the second half.  It was a strong play after a counter attack. With the first attempt on goal by Katrina who was tackled from behind, but she maintained possession to pass to Julia who used her strength and skill to lift the goalie off and put it into the basket through several sets of hands.  It was an impressive goal!

After that, the Spanish started making more attacks on our goals.  At one point, two Spanish girls made a strong counter attack when we only had one goalie down.  Angela did a beautiful job stoping them and gaining possession of the ball to pass it off to a teammate.  

With less than 4 minutes remaining in the game, the Spanish made another  counter attacks on our goal, but we managed to turn it over and start our own counter attack that began with Charlene making a pass to Julia who maintained possession with three girls attacking her, and then made a good pass to Katrina who was waiting near the bottom.  Katrina was able to slip out of the hands of one Spanish player and sprint to the open basket.  Her fin was grabbed just before putting it in and she ended up hitting the ball on the rim, but luckily she recovered and put it in!  

For the remaining few minutes we did our best to maintain possession and kept Spain out of our goal area.  This worked and we finished with a win!!  We went 2-0 for Laura's 20th birthday!!! Those goals were for you :)

Today we play Germany, the defending World Champion, so today is going to be a good game.  Game starts at 17:00 CET (or 11 am EST, 10 am CST, 9 am MST, or 8 am PST).

Here is the link to the live stream for today!!  If for some reason the link isn't the current live stream, look for "Live Now" in red on a different video to find the current one.

Today's Livestream