Coming into this weekend (11/18-11/19), I was totally wiped out. It's been more than six weeks since I've had a single day off from work or practice. Not to mention, we had an exhausting week in Quebec City with three games and a lot of travel, and then I had to go to work all week.
That being said, as always, I was looking forward to the games this weekend. Especially since I figured we would blow away all of these teams and have a nice confidence booster going into our (much-deserved) Thanksgiving break.
Just as a reminder, these games are part of the NETHC, that is what I like to call our "practice" league. These games are against younger or less experienced teams, so it gives us a chance to get playing experience for our newer members of the team.
*Game 1- USA vs. Laurier* (Saturday)
This game was against Laurier Senior team, I have no idea where they come from, but they speak English. We didn't know anything about them coming into this game, but right away it was clear that we should dominate them. We scored a few goals right off the bat after using a really aggressive high defense to force them to make turnovers. It worked well and we were up by almost ten going into the second half. This is where we should have pulled away for a really big win, but we got sloppy and only won by 17.
Final score:USA 32, Laurier 15
*Game 2- USA vs. Chaudiere* (Saturday)
This was another game where we should have dominated. They were the junior team of the team we played in Quebec City last week. We knew their style and also recognized a few of the players that we saw last weekend. We were up by nearly 10 at the end of the first half and could have probably won by 20, but again we got sloppy in the second half and never really pulled ahead. We need to work on this!
Final score:USA 32, Chaudiere 22
*Game 3- USA vs. Sherbrooke* (Sunday)
I'm not going to lie, I was pretty tired when we had to meet at the gym at 8:00am to prepare for two more games! I stayed until 10pm the night before working the tables for the games after us, and I was beat. Thankfully we had an hour to get our minds and bodies warmed up before we had to play, and thankfully I had watched this team play the night before so I had some ideas about what to expect.
I scored the first goal of the game and we came out pretty strong as a team in the beginning. To be honest, looking back all of the games are starting to run together. We played pretty well, but we could have probably won by more. It seems to be a trend. We should have definitely scored more than 24 goals.
Final score:USA 24, Chaudiere 11
*Game 4- USA vs. Laval* (Sunday)
This was definitely the best team of the weekend, although they lost to Chaudiere the night before by three points, which was kind of surprising. We were expecting to run a lot, and knew we had to play good defense, but I think the results of this game took everyone by surprise.
Sure we were all tired after three games, but there was no excuse for us losing the game the way we did. In fact, at half time we were winning 17-7. Then something happened, the game got dirty, and we started making mistakes. We had a couple of two-minute penalties and way too many turnovers. Defensively we started to break down and let them score. I wish I could understand exactly what happened, but it was ugly.
Final score:USA 24, Laval 26
In my mind there is no reason whatsoever we should have lost this game. But I guess we have to experience things like this in order to figure out what we need to work on. We've overcome a big obstacle by learning how to come out strong in the beginning, but we really need to focus on not only keeping our lead, but pulling ahead even more in the second half. We also need to get better at dealing with high pressure situations. With four minutes left to go, we were down by two. There were several opportunities for us to come ahead in the last minutes of the game, but we choked.
We've got some work to do, but hopefully we're making progress. These were the last games before we go to Sweden, so I hope we can remember what we need to do better so we can make the most of our preparation tour in December.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Team Thanksgiving
On Tuesday November 14, we had a team Thanksgiving dinner- it was brilliant! Our teammate Sunny Chen was headed off the Netherlands for a few weeks to train with a team there (see her blog: www.wnteuropeaninvasion.blogspot.com) so she decided to celebrate Thanksgiving early.
First, I love any holiday that revolves around food, and any opportunity to celebrate that holiday more than once is fine by me! Sunny and her roommate Jacque had everyone over to their mansion (they are Army girls, so they can afford to live somewhere nice) for turkey and mashed potatoes- everyone else on the team supplied the rest. They also had some great bottles of wine, and various desserts, so overall it was a FEAST! And of course, no handball holiday would be complete without Christian cooking up his famous escargot! I love it.
After hors d'oeuvres, everyone sat down at a long table together and had an awesome time eating, drinking and just generally being merry. I must say that it was one of the most enjoyable evenings I've had in a long long time. The stress and exhaustion of everyday life seemed to float away as we just enjoyed each other's company.
After eating enough to feed a Somalian village, we sat around the table B-Sing and having a good time. Eventually my teammate Anne pulled out a game called "Rummykube" and we played that for a few hours. I had really bad luck at first, it seemed, and I collected about a million little pieces before I could lay down. But then I laid down all of my pieces on my first turn and won (thanks to some help from my coach). It was a fun time, I can't wait until real Thanksgiving! What a great warm-up :)
Yayy holidays!
First, I love any holiday that revolves around food, and any opportunity to celebrate that holiday more than once is fine by me! Sunny and her roommate Jacque had everyone over to their mansion (they are Army girls, so they can afford to live somewhere nice) for turkey and mashed potatoes- everyone else on the team supplied the rest. They also had some great bottles of wine, and various desserts, so overall it was a FEAST! And of course, no handball holiday would be complete without Christian cooking up his famous escargot! I love it.
After hors d'oeuvres, everyone sat down at a long table together and had an awesome time eating, drinking and just generally being merry. I must say that it was one of the most enjoyable evenings I've had in a long long time. The stress and exhaustion of everyday life seemed to float away as we just enjoyed each other's company.
After eating enough to feed a Somalian village, we sat around the table B-Sing and having a good time. Eventually my teammate Anne pulled out a game called "Rummykube" and we played that for a few hours. I had really bad luck at first, it seemed, and I collected about a million little pieces before I could lay down. But then I laid down all of my pieces on my first turn and won (thanks to some help from my coach). It was a fun time, I can't wait until real Thanksgiving! What a great warm-up :)
Yayy holidays!
Thursday, November 16, 2006
2-1 in Quebec City
*The trip*
This weekend's trip to Quebec City was a long time coming. We haven't played a "real" game since June, and we haven't been in season since last March. It was hard not to be super pumped-up going into the weekend. Especially since I was feeling really confident about how we were going to perform.
We left early on Saturday morning, although sadly not in our "new van." So, we caravanned in three rentals. As can be expected, after claiming my window seat in the pimped out Mercury Mountaineer, I passed out about five minutes into the trip and woke-up as we arrived in downtown Montreal.
As an aside, I love Montreal. It is a fantastic city, and it was fun to wake-up and see all of the people bustling around. Christian dropped us off in front of a VERY crowded restaurant called Egg-spectations, where we met up with our teammate Sarah Gascon (a fellow California girl) who is rehabbing her knee in Lake Placid at the moment.
After a delicious brunch/lunch, we packed back in the cars and headed 2.5 hours north to Quebec City. Again, I slept most of the way, and it was wonderful.
We arrived at the hotel around 4:45, and had an hour to nap/rest/meditate before we had our team meeting and left for the gym. I didn't sleep at this point, but I spent an hour lying in the dark listening to music, and it really seemed to calm my mind- I feel that was key.
*Game 1- USA vs. Chaudiere*
I was definitely hyped for this game, and it felt good to get out and run around during the warm-up, especially after the 8 hour drive. We had plenty of time, so Kathy and I were able to do our passing/shooting thing that we like to do pre-warm-up.
The gym where we played is just a box- almost no room on the outside of the court, so things are really smooshed inside. At least the floor, which was "sport court," had only handball lines on it! Much better than the gym at say, Laval, where you can barely tell where anything is through the 400 different lines crisscrossing the floor.
I started the game at circle, and enjoyed playing both offense and defense, something I'm transitioning to this season. I felt pretty good through most of the game, even though we definitely tried to keep a good pace.
The first few minutes were a little bit tight score-wise, but we came back and stayed ahead by at least a three through most of the game. I scored five goals, which shocked me because I had a man-to-man type defense on me most of the time and I never felt that open. I was also pleased that I got off two nice lobs, and was then able to hit my corners and vary my shot a little bit- something Christian is always telling me to do in practice.
In the end, we won without too much difficulty, although we probably could have won by more. The reffing was ridiculous- they were letting people get away with murder on both sides of the court. I got pushed from behind by two people on a fast break and nothing got called, even when I went flying across the floor!! But Christian said that's the Chaudiere style of play, so we had to suck it up.
Final Score: USA 29, Chaudiere 23
*USA v. Chaudiere (Sunday)*
In our second match against Chaudiere, we saw the same kind of performance from them. They played a high defense and pushed our backcourts out a lot. There was a lot of space for one-on-ones, but we probably should have tried to capitalize on this a bit more.
It was a bit frustrating at the circle, where they played a man-to-man type defense on me, denying the ball. I got two passes the whole game, but at least I was able to draw 7-meter penalties on both of them. No "real" shots, sadly.
To be honest, this game kind of blends into the first game just because we played them so close together.
Final score: USA 27, Chaudiere 21
*USA v. Granby (Sunday)*
We finished the second game against Chaudiere around 11:40 or so and then had an hour break to eat and rest before starting our warm-up for the game against Granby. I had some peanut butter and jelly and a banana and tried to digest it as quickly as possible for I started running around again!
When the game started, we knew we were going to have to push and it wasn't going to be easy. We were up by five at the half-time, and clearly, this was a game we could win. I personally felt pretty good about us winning the game, but somewhere in the second half things began to deteriorate.
Offensively, we made some silly mistakes, but our biggest problem was that we continued to get 2-minute penalties to the point that we were down one person (and at one point, two people) for a majority of the second half. We kept the lead until the last minute when they got ahead by one point. We had several opportunities to score to at least tie it up at the end, but we double-dribbled twice, missed a fast-break shot, and stepped on the line during a wing shot. It was so frustrating because this was such a winnable game.
Obviously we were all pretty bummed at the end. No one likes to lose, but especially when it is a team you can beat. We were up by eight at one point in the beginning of the second half, and we lost- not because of external circumstances that we couldn't control- but because we dug our own grave.
Needless to say, it was a quiet trip back. That being said, we did stop and eat at a nice pasta bar halfway between Quebec City and Montreal. After that I passed out for the remainder of the drive home. We arrived at 11:45pm, and even though I was hungry again, I was too tired to bother eating, so I went straight to bed.
This weekend's trip to Quebec City was a long time coming. We haven't played a "real" game since June, and we haven't been in season since last March. It was hard not to be super pumped-up going into the weekend. Especially since I was feeling really confident about how we were going to perform.
We left early on Saturday morning, although sadly not in our "new van." So, we caravanned in three rentals. As can be expected, after claiming my window seat in the pimped out Mercury Mountaineer, I passed out about five minutes into the trip and woke-up as we arrived in downtown Montreal.
As an aside, I love Montreal. It is a fantastic city, and it was fun to wake-up and see all of the people bustling around. Christian dropped us off in front of a VERY crowded restaurant called Egg-spectations, where we met up with our teammate Sarah Gascon (a fellow California girl) who is rehabbing her knee in Lake Placid at the moment.
After a delicious brunch/lunch, we packed back in the cars and headed 2.5 hours north to Quebec City. Again, I slept most of the way, and it was wonderful.
We arrived at the hotel around 4:45, and had an hour to nap/rest/meditate before we had our team meeting and left for the gym. I didn't sleep at this point, but I spent an hour lying in the dark listening to music, and it really seemed to calm my mind- I feel that was key.
*Game 1- USA vs. Chaudiere*
I was definitely hyped for this game, and it felt good to get out and run around during the warm-up, especially after the 8 hour drive. We had plenty of time, so Kathy and I were able to do our passing/shooting thing that we like to do pre-warm-up.
The gym where we played is just a box- almost no room on the outside of the court, so things are really smooshed inside. At least the floor, which was "sport court," had only handball lines on it! Much better than the gym at say, Laval, where you can barely tell where anything is through the 400 different lines crisscrossing the floor.
I started the game at circle, and enjoyed playing both offense and defense, something I'm transitioning to this season. I felt pretty good through most of the game, even though we definitely tried to keep a good pace.
The first few minutes were a little bit tight score-wise, but we came back and stayed ahead by at least a three through most of the game. I scored five goals, which shocked me because I had a man-to-man type defense on me most of the time and I never felt that open. I was also pleased that I got off two nice lobs, and was then able to hit my corners and vary my shot a little bit- something Christian is always telling me to do in practice.
In the end, we won without too much difficulty, although we probably could have won by more. The reffing was ridiculous- they were letting people get away with murder on both sides of the court. I got pushed from behind by two people on a fast break and nothing got called, even when I went flying across the floor!! But Christian said that's the Chaudiere style of play, so we had to suck it up.
Final Score: USA 29, Chaudiere 23
*USA v. Chaudiere (Sunday)*
In our second match against Chaudiere, we saw the same kind of performance from them. They played a high defense and pushed our backcourts out a lot. There was a lot of space for one-on-ones, but we probably should have tried to capitalize on this a bit more.
It was a bit frustrating at the circle, where they played a man-to-man type defense on me, denying the ball. I got two passes the whole game, but at least I was able to draw 7-meter penalties on both of them. No "real" shots, sadly.
To be honest, this game kind of blends into the first game just because we played them so close together.
Final score: USA 27, Chaudiere 21
*USA v. Granby (Sunday)*
We finished the second game against Chaudiere around 11:40 or so and then had an hour break to eat and rest before starting our warm-up for the game against Granby. I had some peanut butter and jelly and a banana and tried to digest it as quickly as possible for I started running around again!
When the game started, we knew we were going to have to push and it wasn't going to be easy. We were up by five at the half-time, and clearly, this was a game we could win. I personally felt pretty good about us winning the game, but somewhere in the second half things began to deteriorate.
Offensively, we made some silly mistakes, but our biggest problem was that we continued to get 2-minute penalties to the point that we were down one person (and at one point, two people) for a majority of the second half. We kept the lead until the last minute when they got ahead by one point. We had several opportunities to score to at least tie it up at the end, but we double-dribbled twice, missed a fast-break shot, and stepped on the line during a wing shot. It was so frustrating because this was such a winnable game.
Obviously we were all pretty bummed at the end. No one likes to lose, but especially when it is a team you can beat. We were up by eight at one point in the beginning of the second half, and we lost- not because of external circumstances that we couldn't control- but because we dug our own grave.
Needless to say, it was a quiet trip back. That being said, we did stop and eat at a nice pasta bar halfway between Quebec City and Montreal. After that I passed out for the remainder of the drive home. We arrived at 11:45pm, and even though I was hungry again, I was too tired to bother eating, so I went straight to bed.
Monday, November 06, 2006
World Championship Website
The 2007 Handball World Championships (Women) will be in France next December. This is one of the events we will try to qualify for over the next several months.
Here's a link to the site:
The World Championships are huge for handball, so it would be a really amazing experience to go. I hope we end up in the south of France for the preliminary rounds, just so we don't have to be somewhere TOO cold!
Physical Testing
A few times a year, and especially in advance of selections for major events, the WNT players have to go through a battery of physical tests. I think for most players (myself included, maybe even to an extreme), this is a stressful process. The tests themselves aren't too bad, but I think it is the pressure of wanting to see improvements in yourself, and the competitiveness that comes from watching your teammates complete the tests as well. Plus, I'm not going to lie, I feel like years of being graded at school make me feel that numbers somehow define my self-worth. I realize that this is ridiculous, but I'm not sure if that kind of social conditioning can be undone.
Saturday we did the "easy stuff"- which was basically a bunch of measurements. Height, weight, arm span, hand span, and body fat percentage calculations. Sadly, I have not grown six inches since my last physical test in May, so I will continue to lose points for my height and really small hands. That sucks!
On Sunday was the real killer. We started off in the weight room with sit-ups, push-ups, chin-ups, and bench press. I improved in everything, except chin-ups, but maybe it's because I've been doing the overhand ones for my newest workout program. Or maybe my arms were just really tired from having done 55 push-ups in a minute just two minutes before that. Oh well.
After the arm stuff, we went to the field house to do the running stuff. We started off with the long jump and vertical, and then moved onto the 30m sprint, t-test, and ball throw. For the most part, I improved on everything, and don't dread any of those tests too much.
The final event, the beep test, is a test of endurance. This is by far the most difficult part of the testing for me, and the one that stresses me out the most. For those who have never done it, it is basically running between two lines (20m shuttle) as the beeps on the CD get faster and faster. You run until you can't run anymore. I tried to psychologically prepare myself for this by downloading the beep test and listening to it in my bed while I visualized. I realized that I failed miserably with this excercise as when I started to hyperventalate in my bed around level 6. I had chest pains and difficulty breathing when I was just thinking about it! Then I dreamed about beeps all night and didn't sleep. Note to self: I suck at visualizing.
When the real test began I couldn't breathe before it even started!! Thankfully, by the end of level 1 I had calmed down a bit and was able to reach my goal of improving a level from my last test. I still have a ways to go before I reach my ultimate goal, but I'm working on it.
All-in-all, I think I showed a general improvement, and also know where I want to continue to see improvement. I guess that's the goal of the physical testing for the athletes anyway, to give yourself an idea of how you're doing. I'm just glad it is only once every 3-4 months!
Saturday we did the "easy stuff"- which was basically a bunch of measurements. Height, weight, arm span, hand span, and body fat percentage calculations. Sadly, I have not grown six inches since my last physical test in May, so I will continue to lose points for my height and really small hands. That sucks!
On Sunday was the real killer. We started off in the weight room with sit-ups, push-ups, chin-ups, and bench press. I improved in everything, except chin-ups, but maybe it's because I've been doing the overhand ones for my newest workout program. Or maybe my arms were just really tired from having done 55 push-ups in a minute just two minutes before that. Oh well.
After the arm stuff, we went to the field house to do the running stuff. We started off with the long jump and vertical, and then moved onto the 30m sprint, t-test, and ball throw. For the most part, I improved on everything, and don't dread any of those tests too much.
The final event, the beep test, is a test of endurance. This is by far the most difficult part of the testing for me, and the one that stresses me out the most. For those who have never done it, it is basically running between two lines (20m shuttle) as the beeps on the CD get faster and faster. You run until you can't run anymore. I tried to psychologically prepare myself for this by downloading the beep test and listening to it in my bed while I visualized. I realized that I failed miserably with this excercise as when I started to hyperventalate in my bed around level 6. I had chest pains and difficulty breathing when I was just thinking about it! Then I dreamed about beeps all night and didn't sleep. Note to self: I suck at visualizing.
When the real test began I couldn't breathe before it even started!! Thankfully, by the end of level 1 I had calmed down a bit and was able to reach my goal of improving a level from my last test. I still have a ways to go before I reach my ultimate goal, but I'm working on it.
All-in-all, I think I showed a general improvement, and also know where I want to continue to see improvement. I guess that's the goal of the physical testing for the athletes anyway, to give yourself an idea of how you're doing. I'm just glad it is only once every 3-4 months!
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Not enough of a good thing
My general rule of thumb is that you can never have too much chocolate, garlic, or Law & Order, and apparently the same thing goes for coaches as well. OK, maybe there's a point where like 10 coaches would be too many (too many chefs ruin the soup?), but we're nowhere near that point.
This week has been awesome- we have our assistant coach, Dawn, in town for the week along with Niclas, our Swedish goalie coach (and by Swedish I mean he just arrived from Sweden on Sunday). We also had our USOC rep (and former National Team player) Mike in town to out at practice. To make the most of our handball entourage, we added a few more practices in the mornings, so there's been a lot going on. But I have to say, having this many coaches around really makes practice awesome; we can split up and work on different things, and the intensitiy is so much higher.
It's too bad we can't have three or more coaches with us all the time, I feel like we'd be able to get better so much faster! That being said, we'll take what we can get. Maybe it wouldn't be as exciting if we had it all the time :)
In other news, this week has been good preparation for us as we get ready for our first Quebec League games next week. I am REALLY looking forward to making the trip to Canada, it gets me all excited thinking that the season is starting again. I feel like we're going to do really well, so we better go 3-0 again next weekend! We're playing in Quebec City, so the drive will be long, but I don't mind. Supposedly we're going to have our new van (!?!!!!?) by then, so we don't have to worry about the car exploding on the way, which is a relief. And it is still early in the year, so maybe there won't be too much snow. Either way I get to kick it for a few hours and listen to my ipod and nap and relax and hang out with my cool teammates and get a change of scenery. Oh yeah, and work on my French, too :)
Yay handball!!!
This week has been awesome- we have our assistant coach, Dawn, in town for the week along with Niclas, our Swedish goalie coach (and by Swedish I mean he just arrived from Sweden on Sunday). We also had our USOC rep (and former National Team player) Mike in town to out at practice. To make the most of our handball entourage, we added a few more practices in the mornings, so there's been a lot going on. But I have to say, having this many coaches around really makes practice awesome; we can split up and work on different things, and the intensitiy is so much higher.
It's too bad we can't have three or more coaches with us all the time, I feel like we'd be able to get better so much faster! That being said, we'll take what we can get. Maybe it wouldn't be as exciting if we had it all the time :)
In other news, this week has been good preparation for us as we get ready for our first Quebec League games next week. I am REALLY looking forward to making the trip to Canada, it gets me all excited thinking that the season is starting again. I feel like we're going to do really well, so we better go 3-0 again next weekend! We're playing in Quebec City, so the drive will be long, but I don't mind. Supposedly we're going to have our new van (!?!!!!?) by then, so we don't have to worry about the car exploding on the way, which is a relief. And it is still early in the year, so maybe there won't be too much snow. Either way I get to kick it for a few hours and listen to my ipod and nap and relax and hang out with my cool teammates and get a change of scenery. Oh yeah, and work on my French, too :)
Yay handball!!!
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