The last two days the National A team agreed to scrimmage with us. This was a great experience for the B team athletes. A lot of these players have watched some of the A team play for many years. It was a joy to compete with them. A chance to say you had the opportunity to play against Sarah Pavan, Tammy Mahon and the rest of the team is something a lot of them have wanted to do for a long time.
It also reminded me of a conversation I had a while ago one of my mentors Frank Enns. He told me that teams sometime enter into a competition with an idea that they are either 5-7 points better or worse than the opposition. This is a scary thing because when the match score is 16-15 instead of playing with confidence and having a lead, it actually feels like they are down 20-16. This is one of the biggest challenges for teams. Whenever our university team has the opportunity to compete against college or 18U teams we see this happen. It is a tough mindset to get out of. There is a saying in sport "the team that stays in the moment the best will be the most successful". These matches had both ends of that discussion, with our team coming out tentative at times. Also the A team being up on us and the feeling across the net was they were losing. Sport is interesting and challenging all in the same set.
A flu has also taken ahold of some of the athletes on the B team. Everyone of the players with the flu still played their hearts out and contribute to the success of the team. Some of the best stories are when players are so sick that all they focus on is "please don't let me puke during the match". They just perform on automatic pilot. "Don't think just play Meat" as Kevin Costner said in Bull Durham.
We also wrapped up our final presentation for our group of 17. It is posted above. The video was created by two of the athletes. Marie Sophie and Lisa. Just showing some of the other talents we have on the team. The Audio is taken from a Versus channel add. They have great commercials.
Tomorrow we say good by to the 5 athletes who are not travelling with us. WE will have the flag symbolizing their spirit. We are way better because they were there and help challenge us on a daily basis. It is going to have a weird feeling without them...But we will play harder for them.
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