Today ended our Olympic competition. We played in the 7th-8th place classification game against Spain. Following our trend of the tournament we ended regulation in a 2-2 tie. Surprise surprise! We actually came out in this game rather slow again from the start and found ourselves down 1-0 pretty quick. As half time approached we got a corner. I was rushing in as a rebounder and what do you know the ball rebounded right to me. My first thought was oh my goodness I am wide open near the goal line with the ball on my stick. My second thought was Dana hurry up and do something with it. I was able to spin on my defender and push the ball into the goal, just over the goalie’s stick. I was sooooooo excited that I scored! It was an amazing feeling scoring in the Olympics. It is something I will never forget and one of my most rewarding accomplishments. I was also very excited because I had help my team tie up the score. During the second half it was a battle. Spain got 4 cards and we got 1. Three of the four were Yellow cards which means the player has to sit out for about 5-7 mins. The game kept going back and forth with both teams showing some signs of fatigue so late in the tournament. We finally got the go ahead goal at 2-1 only to see it slip away with less than 3 mins left in the game on a goal by Spain. We went to overtime for 7.5 mins and still we were tie. In the second overtime we had chances but couldn’t convert. With only a little over a minute before we would have gone to penalty strokes, Spain got a corner and scored! Game over!
It was definitely a day filled with mixed emotions. We learned so much from being at our first Olympics. First lesson was that winning at this level is not easy. We played so well and so hard every game but just didn’t finish off the games. No matter what level of hockey you are playing if you can’t score goals you very rarely come off with the result you are looking for. We are disappointed in our 8th place finish. But in the grand scheme of things we just played in the OLYMPICS and improved our world ranking but 3 or 4 spots.
The experience of these past few weeks is something that will always stay with me. The people that I’ve met, things and events I’ve witnessed and the games I’ve played are all very special to me. I am glad that I could share my experiences with you over the past two weeks. I hope you have enjoyed keeping tabs on USA field hockey and the happenings in Beijing. I hope you all have a great rest of the summer. Thanks so much for reading!
Dana
p.s. A huge thank you goes out to Keith Schweigert and Chris Maurer and all the people at lancasteronline.com who helped make this possible. It was a great idea and I really had a lot of fun! Thanks!
