By Molly Miller and Caroline (CDub) Whiting

 

We woke up this morning and walked over to Starbucks for breakfast.  Then we went to the mall and walked around and saw the movie "John Tucker Must Die."  It was a good movie.  Then we ate lunch at the food court and came back to the hotel.  We went swimming and played games in the pool, did laundry, and ordered pizzas in our rooms.  Then we surfed the elevators, rode them up and down for a while.  Finally we had a 10PM curfew and are now in our rooms watching movies.  Porter is doing room checks tonight to make sure we are where we are supposed to be.  Tomorrow we will go to the fields and watch the finals.  This is the last of our daily reports.  It has been a great experience!  We hope to get back to Nationals again next year.

By Nicole (Guti) Stanton and Adriana (Ace) Moya

 

We got to sleep in this morning!  All the way to 8:50AM.  They stopped serving breakfast at 9 so we had to go down and have breakfast.  Then we had a team meeting and signed thank you post-cards to all the people who had supported us on our trip.  Thank you to any of you who are reading this!  Then we went to our game vs. the Dallas Texans.  We knew we had to win it in order to have a chance to advance.

 

The game was at 12:30 and it was really hot and muggy and hard to breathe.  We scored first, CDub got the goal, and we were really excited and our confidence rose.  We held them until the second half, then they scored a goal and then a second one on a free kick.  We put Lulee up front after that and she got some good pressure and finally got a goal at the very end of the game on a nice upper V shot to tie it 2-2.  We were watching the scoreboard of the other game throughout our game and saw it was 1-0 and we thought Chicago was winning, which is what we wanted to happen.  But then we found out after our game that PDA had won and that Chicago spent the last part of the game just passing the ball back and forth and not even trying to score.  That made us pretty upset.  But there was nothing we could do about it - PDA and Chicago are in the final.

 

We came back and finally got to go in the pool.  We played games and had a lot of fun.  Senator John Kerry was staying at our hotel and we got our picture taken with him.  Then we walked a long way to the Player Event and it was really hot.  They had stuff outside but we just sat in the hotel for a while to cool off.  Then we walked around asking random people (boys) for their phone numbers.  There was a band there playing outside playing some fun music.  We got some shakers from them and were dancing around the stage and then we got up on stage with them and danced and sang backup to Twist and Shout until we blew a fuse and they had no power.  Then we danced some more in front of the stage other people joined us - it was a lot of fun.  We had a water fight with some really cold water then walked back to the hotel and watched TV and talked on our cell phones since we were finally allowed to have them at night.  Tomorrow you'll hear from Miller and CDub.

By Molly (Lav) Lavin and Erica (Ed) DeJong:

 

We had to wake up really early this morning, around 6AM to eat breakfast and get ready for our 8:30 game.  When we got out to the fields, it was really humid. We were sweating so much even though it was still early in the morning.  It was really hazy from the humidity.  By the time we started our game we were already drenched - we've never been that sweaty.  We were playing the Eclipse from Chicago.  They scored on us first, so we were trying to come back and tie up the game.  At about the 60 minute mark, we had to leave the game because of lightning.  All the games stopped.  We sat in the vans with the air conditioning on to stay cool for over an hour before the games re-started.  Then we came back out and tried to tie the game up - and we did.  Lulee scored an amazing goal, like she always does.  We watched the very end of the Dallas Texans and PDA Pride game, which ended in a 1-1 tie.  We play the Texans tomorrow.  We had lunch at Quiznos after that and a lot of people had soup this time - we started a new trend.  It was really good.  We came back to the hotel and showered, and watched movies.  In our room we watched Final Destination 3 - it was not scary, it was just gross.  We give it 4 thumbs down.  Chipper really liked it though.  She likes those kinds of movies.  We had dinner at the Cheescake Factory, as guests of the Washington State Youth Soccer Association.  Thanks very much to WSYSA and to Wayne and Todd who came with us. Of course we had to have some of the famous cheesecake for dessert.  On the way back to the hotel, we saw a "Girls Gone Wild" bus and we stopped to take pictures of it.  For some reason, the cast of MTV's Real World was there and we saw some of them.  Then we had a team meeting and talked about our game today and what we need to do tomorrow.  Everyone is super excited about the game tomorrow, we definitely think we can win it.  If we win, and Chicago beats or ties PDA, we would go to the Final to play Chicago again.  Our experience so far has been great - it has been hard, trying, a good learning experience, and lots of fun.  Hopefully we will play well tomorrow.  JC already promised to score a goal, and so does Chipper.  Tomorrow you get to hear from Guti and Ace.

   

Our Fans!

Spaghetti Dinner

By Kenisha (Nisha) Macklin and Ashley (Dino) Correa
 
On our first full day in Des Moines, we got to sleep in a bit.  We had breakfast in the lobby of our hotel then hung out some and got ready for lunch.  They we got all dressed up in our matching black dresses and went to the player luncheon.  They fed us chicken, veggie stuffed pasta, and chocolate cake.  We got an orientation to the tournament and they told us how lucky we are to be here - there are so many teams and so few make it this far.  We definitely feel fortunate to be here.  Then we got our gear and headed back to the fields for a practice, about a 10 minute drive where we cross the Des Moines river.  The fields are really nice, even better than the fields we played on at Regionals in Boise.  Porter and Amy (our coaches) had to leave early for a coaches meeting, so we had a pretty light practice - played some possession and did some shooting.  Then we came back and went to dinner at an Italian restaurant to have some pasta and do some carbo loading.  On the way back there was a HUGE thunder and lightning storm and it poured down rain.  Apparently lightning hit our hotel, because when we got back, all the power was out, including the elevators and we are on the higher floors.  So we hung out in the lobby, had our team meeting and did some stretching.  Then we played the "Animal Game"  - it involves sitting in a circle, clapping, imitating animals, and laughing a lot.  Finally we gave up on the elevators and walked the stairs up to our rooms to get ready to sleep.  We really like Des Moines - the people are really nice and welcoming and they tell us they are glad we are here.  Tomorrow you get to hear from Lulee and JC.

By Heather (Chipper) Thomas and Diana (PD) Pollock

 

We got up very early this morning - around 3AM for most of us - to make our 6:30AM flight to Omaha.  It was really hard to get up because it was still dark and it was hard to fall asleep the night before because it was so hot.  We took our plane to Denver and most of us fell asleep during the flight or watched movies and hung out.  Then we flew from Denver to Omaha, picked up our luggage and vans, and headed out on the drive to Des Moines.  It was almost two hours to get there and there was not much to see.  It was really flat and mostly corn fields in all directions.  We stopped on the way at Dairy Queen to get something to eat - we were starving by then.  We were pretty tired from the flight and van ride by the time we got to the hotel, but were really excited to see the fields.  We are staying at the Marriott - it is a nice hotel - and we have 4 players to a room.  We got changed and headed over to the fields.  The fields are great - the grass is perfect.  It will be a lot of fun to play there.  We had a light workout, just enough to get stretched out after travel:  some possession games, shooting, etc.  The weather was a lot like Washington when we left - a bit humid, but actually cooler than the 94 degree weather we had this past weekend.  We had dinner in the restaurant in the hotel, followed by a team meeting, and now we are relaxing in our rooms, getting ready for bed.  We are looking forward to the players luncheon tomorrow.  More coming from Nisha and Dino tomorrow.