Today was a big day! Today was the day I, and the rest of my teammates, officially became Olympians! It is still hard to believe! I am so honored to represent my country and Lancaster County at such an amazing competition. Okay moving on to more exciting things. Our first game. Tonight we played in a steady rain for most of the game against Argentina. It was a nice change from the incredible humidity. We came out to a very slow start and found ourselves in a quick 2-0 hole. Obviously, not the way we wanted to come out against one of our biggest rivals in the opening game of the Olympics. However, we showed great strength and persistence and fought our way back to 2-1 at half time. We were full of energy and excitement to start the second half. About 6 minutes into the half one of our players got a yellow card and was sent off the field for about 13 minutes. This meant we played down a player for a good chunk of time. Very hard to do normally, let alone against the #2 ranked team in the world. Our defense was incredible and our goalie Amy Tran made some incredible saves (this was also Amy’s 100th game!!!). We held onto the 2-1 score until we were full strength again and then with about 11 minutes left another player got a yellow card and sat out for about 5 minutes. This was extremely frustrating for us because we played most of the half 10 v. 11. We strung together a couple of great passes and then Kelly Doton smashed a great ball into the circle and Angie Loy made an awesome tip to score the tying goal with about 3 minutes left. We went nuts. It was a great comeback. Although we know we are a good enough team to have pulled out a win, and we certainly didn’t play our best tonight we are okay with the tie. It is way better than a loss.

On another note, my family arrived safely in Beijing. My mother, brother and sister all arrived safe and sound last night in China. They are staying with a couple other hockey families in the area. It was absolutely great to see them after the game. I am so glad that they have the opportunity to experience this!

Thank you to everyone who got up early this morning to watch the game. I greatly appreciate the support. I can’t tell you how many emails and Facebook messages I have been getting. Unfortunately, it is hard for me to respond to everyone, but please know that I am extremely grateful for your thoughts and prayers.

More specifically, today I’d like to thank my Aunt Terry, Uncle Ed and grandma Betty (aka Mom K) for their continued support and amazing encouragement. I know that they are watching every game no matter what time of day! I love you!

Opening Ceremonies was amazing! I can’t really describe it in any other way. The whole night for us lasted about 8 hours. We left the village at 5pm and returned a little after 1am. Our first experience of the night was USA staging in the fencing hall. All of the USA athletes attending the march met in here. We were all in one room and it was basically a free for all. The entire men’s basketball team was there, which as you can imagine caused quite the commotion. So, basically for an hour I went around and got pictures of me and as many “stars” as I could. Some of the highlights were meeting LeBron, Kobe, Dwayne Wade, Jason Kidd, and Coach K. After about an hour of feeling completely star struck, we were welcomed to the Olympic Games by George W. Bush! It was extremely cool meeting and shaking the president’s hand. He wished our team good luck and we got a team photo with him. And that was only the beginning.

Here is a picture of all the girls on our team who went to ODU in staging (L to R: Tiff Snow, Angie Loy, Me, Caroline Nichols).

We left the fencing hall and walked about a quarter of a mile to the gymnastics arena for staging for the march.

As you can tell by what we are wearing in our photo, we were extremely hot and uncomfortable for the 1.5 hours we sat in this building waiting for our country to be called to line up and walk to the birds nest. We were country 140! At about 10pm we left the gymnastics arena and began our slow journey to the birds nest. Although it was about a half hour slow walk in a herd of people to the birds nest, it flew by because we were so excited to get to the stadium. We spent the thirty minutes taking pictures of the area and each other.

When we got to the birds nest, and started our march through the tunnel to the entrance of the stadium I got goosebumps as the crowd started chanting USA! USA! USA! Marching around that stadium, seeing all the American flags and taking it all in was something I will never forget. I will also never forget the torch lighting ceremony that took place at the end of the evening. About midnight, the final torch relay took place around the track. The last runner stopped on a red carpet and then was lifting to the top of the stadium on a cable. The torch was about 20 feet above him on the edge of the stadium’s top. He then was flown around the top of the entire stadium on the cable back to where the torch was. It was a spectacular sight. When he lit the torch the crowd went wild. I watched the video of it this morning and I still am in awe of it.

Below are pictures from the opening. From L to R: The birds nest as we were walking to it before the march, me with the newly lit torch in the background, the birds nest as we were leaving, and the view of the packed stadium inside during the march!

Don’t forget, our first game against Argentina is tomorrow night. It will be shown live on MSNBC at with a 6:30am start of the game. I hope you can tune it! Go USA!

I’d like to thank the my cousin and his family for their continued support and encouragement. The Ficthorn family is Tyler, Mindy, Bea and Rylee!

Tonight is the night that we have all been waiting for! The 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremonies. We are all very excited about going to the big show. I believe that they will be aired at home for you folks on NBC at 7:30pm. I hope you can tune in and watch. We will be about country 140 out of 200 some to walk in. So if you tune in late you can still catch us. Hopefully our hockey team will get on TV but there are so many athletes from the USA that it may not quite work out that way. The people around Beijing, and the rest of the world for that fact, have been talking about how incredible their plans are for tonights ceremonies. I can’t wait to see the show!

Last night our scrimmage with Korea went very well. We ended up tying 2-2 but we played very well and were happy with our execution of skills. We are very very excited to start off our tournament with our first game on Sunday evening against Argentina. This game will be televised on MSNBC live (6:30am E.S.T.). I hope you can all get up early to watch our first game.

Here are a few more pictures from our trip so far. Left to Right: The birds nest(where the opening ceremonies will be held tonight), and two shots of the flag raising ceremony from Tuesday night in the village.

Today I’d like to thank my grandparents Mary and Raymond for all their support and especially their prayers for me over this incredible journey!

Wow… do I have a lot to catch you all up on. The last two days have been very busy for us here in China. Besides are practicing and getting used to the humidity and smog we had a chance to do some sight seeing. Wednesday morning we practiced and then left for our excursion to the Great Wall and Leisure City. The coaching staff thought it would be good for us to get some time away from the village before we are going to be pretty much stuck here once our games start. We took a bus about an hour and a half outside the village to a section of the Great Wall. The view along the way was very pretty, lots of fields and trees. Mostly peaceful. It was hard to see to far in the distance, however, due to the heavy smog. When we got closer to the wall there were beautiful mountains and great picture opportunities. We started the climb up the mountain through a street filled with village vendors pushing us to buy everything from bananas to carvings of stone with our names on it. It was quite the experience with local vendors. Our trek up the mountain took about 30 minutes and roughly 700 steps. There was a cable car to the top but we decided on the rugged way. Maybe not the best choice in the 90 degree weather. But needless to say we made it to the top dripping in sweat and amazed by the view. The wall was a structure like no other I have ever seen. We could see it go across the mountain peaks in each direction with towers every couple hundred yards. We spent about 30 minutes walking along the top of the wall stopping for pictures before we scaled down the mountain on a toboggan ride. This was not quite as neat as taking in the beautiful view of the wall, but it was definitely a highlight of the trip. We each sat on a small plastic toboggan that flew down the mountain in a silver chute. There was a lever to control your speed, of course we all wanted to see who could go down the fastest. We all made it to the bottom of the mountain safely!

Below are some pictures from the Great Wall. From L to R:  Angie Loy and myself on top of the Wall, the view from atop the Great Wall, Kelly Doton preparing for the ride down the mountain.

After the Great Wall excursion, we then drove about another hour to a place called Leisure City. This small resort area was filled with outdoor spas and an indoor water park. We stayed in a 6 room pagoda that had a courtyard with an outdoor hot bath in the center. The water looked slightly questionable so we all stayed out of it. We enjoyed dinner at a very nice hotel and then headed to bed.

Today, Thursday, we were planning on spending a few hours in the morning exploring Leisure City, when we were happily informed that the Beijing 2008 Torch Relay would be passing through the area and that the water park was closed until 11am. We were actually very excited for this, not only because it was the famous and amazing torch relay but because the water park consisted of 2 water slides and a very small and similarly questionable wave pool. So we waited along with about 500 other spectators for the torch to pass through. It was quite an incredible sight. We saw two “hand-offs” of the torch. In reality, each runner of the torch only runs about 40 meters with the flame and then they pass it on to another runner. It was a very neat thing to see so close to the beginning of the games and right here in Beijing.

So, overall our out of the village getaway turned out to be quite the exciting time. With all the excitement, however, we are very glad to be back in the comforts of the village and look forward to getting back onto the field tonight. We have a scrimmage tonight with Korea and one more final tune up tomorrow morning before the Games begin.

Today I’d like to thank my two wonderful younger siblings Timothy and Carrie. They have gone to more hockey games over the last 6 years than they probably would have liked. They traveled the whole way to Russia and now are preparing to leave in 2 days to come to China!

Thanks to the Janke Family for their support. This includes my older sister Kelly, her husband Bryan, and her two adorable children Olivia and Ben!!!

Hello to all,

Today has been a very exciting day thus far. We had breakfast in the village dinning hall and saw Misty May and Kerri Walsh. They are the gold medal favorites for the women’s beach volleyball competition. We then went to practice. Today we got to practice on pitch A. Which is the main competition field. It was amazing. It is most likely the largest field hockey specific stadium that I have or ever will play in. The city of Beijing has spent a lot of time and money preparing the venues and it shows. We are extremely excited to play in that stadium in front of a full crowd. Another plus about the field is that it is about 1mile from the Village. We get on the bus and in about 2 minutes we are at the field. It is extremely convenient.

After practice we came back, showered and then headed to lunch. Today I learned a very important lesson about life in an Olympic Village. Always have your camera with you! Because, at lunch we saw Roger Federer, Dirk Nowitzki, and Micheal Phelps. It was the most exciting meal by far. It was crazy. We were sitting there as a team and then we saw this big mob of people taking pictures. That was for Roger. Then we saw Micheal Phelps sitting two tables away, straight across from us. My teammate, Keli Smith, and I went over and got a picture with him. And then no sooner does he get up and leave does the German basketball team walk over and sit down at the same table. And we got to see Dirk. What an exciting lunch.

Tonight, the excitement continues as we have the USA flag raising ceremonies at the International Zone. All of the USA athletes are invited. It is a relatively short ceremony where the organizers of the Olympics welcomes our delegation and then raises the Old Glory in our honor with the national anthem being played. We have heard from past Olympians that it is a very touchy ceremony. I am very honored to be representing my country and Lancaster County in this event!

Here are a couple pictures of the scenery in the village.

Hello Everyone,

We made it to China safely! It was a very very long flight, about 12 hours. Everything went pretty smoothly, we had about a 1 hour delay taking off because, the baggage belt broke so they had to bring all the luggage to the plane by hand and load it. Other than that, the trip went great. We landed in China around 3pm on Sunday afternoon and picked up our accreditations at the airport and then we were bussed over to the village. The ride to the village was neat because we passed several of the Games venues. We got to see the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube. They are very impressive structures. The village is a small community of apartment buildings which house all of the athletes for the Olympics. Our whole building is comprised of other USA athletes. Our actual apartments are very nice. There are three bedrooms (two people to a room) and two bathrooms. We are on the first floor and have a nice little patio with about a 4ft by 3 ft fenced in grass area. It is very accommodating. My roommate is Amy Tran who is also from the Lancaster-Lebanon area. We are looking forward to sharing this Olympic Experience together. Inside the village as well is a dinning hall, which is about 14 times bigger than your average high school cafeteria with a McDonald’s in it. There is also the International Zone. Inside the international zone there is a souvenir shop, general store, post office, small cafes, and some other vending areas. I have yet to journey over there to check it out, but according to other athletes its pretty neat.

This afternoon we will have our first opportunity to train and check out the facilities. We are very excited to get out and see the hockey fields and of course we will explore the village more in our free time.

Through out these Olympic Games there are hundreds of people back at home supporting me and our field hockey team. I would like to show all of my appreciation for the support by recognizing as many supporters as possible throughout this experience. In order to do this, I will be posting as many pictures of supporters from home as I can. Thanks again for all of your support!

These are my #1 Fans: my parents. Thanks to them for all the amazing encouragement and love that has helped me get to this amazing achievement. They have showed me that God has a plan and you need to trust in it.

Hello Everyone,

The time to leave for China is rapidly approaching. We leave in 4 days for Beijing! As you can imagine our team is very anxious to get to the Olympics and begin the tournament. It has been a long, hard 7 months leading up to this moment and we are all ready to show the world what we are capable of doing.  With only a few days left to prepare, we are busy packing and putting the finishing touches on our training. On Friday we head to San Fransisco where we will meet up with other USA Olympic Team members and go through a process called Team Processing. This is where we will get briefed on all the excitment of the Olympics and what to expect and look for. We will then be issued our official USA Olympic Team apparel. We will spend the night as a team at San Jose University and then we will leave Saturday morning for Beijing. I look forward to sharing my experiences with all of you through this blog! I hope you will be able to enjoy the 2008 Olympic Games as much as I will!

Dana