August 9, 2008
Hey Everyone!!!
We are here in Beijing at the Olympic Village and have had much to tell the few days we have been here. We have already had a few practices and are getting familiarized with this gigantic village with so many things to do and people to meet! But the highlights thus far have come in the last 24 hours. Last night I was able to attend my very first opening ceremonies and it did not disappoint!! First of all, our team looked so good all dressed up in our Ralph Lauren blazer and khaki's, topped off with a cute newsboy cap! As we waited our turn to march through the tunnel into the stadium, we mingled with athletes from other countries and met many from our own as well. The anticipation grew strong however as soon as we neared the end of the tunnel. All of a sudden, our whole US delegation of athletes and coaches began chanting "USA! USA!" and you could feel the pride pumping through the goose bumps that had risen on my arms. As we got to the entrance of the stadium we heard over the loud speaker, "United States of America" and 90,000 fans greeted us. What a feeling. I have experienced the pride of being an Olympian, but to experience it with all those who are representing our country by your side, was a whole other level of excitement. Once inside, the best part was the lighting of the torch ... retired gymnast Li Ning ran across the top of the stadium while being suspended in the air, following him were the faces of all those who had run with the torch from all over the world. It was absolutely spectacular ... with a giant ignition of fire to light the enormous torch at the top of the stadium.The whole night was so stimulatingwe thoughtit was going to be hard to get up for practice today.
That is until an entourage of cars showed up at practice and President Bush came out ready to play. He watched us hit, tried out some gloves, even asked me where I learned to hit. But the highlight of the day was when our very own Laura Berg pranked the president. Now as many of you know, Bergie is THE prankster and is always up to something with a teammate or coach. However, she went above and beyond any prank she has ever done when President Bush said hello; she shook his hand, said "Hit there Mr. President" and gave him a good hard slap on the back.What she had done was caked her hand full of chalk and left a perfect five-fingered hand print on the back of his shirt. Now of course, there is a million members of the media taking pictures and video and just snapping away at the president with a hand print across his back. We finally had to tell him because everyone was laughing and really, you can only prank the president for so long right?The highlight of his visit then came when we did our traditional (what we do for every game and practice, from the movie Miracle)"Who do you play for?". President Bush took the place of Coach Candrea in the huddle threw his hand out with all of ours piled on top and shouted "Who do you play for?" where we loudly responded with "USA!!" Hard to get much more patriotic then that. Pretty cool stuff in the last 24 hours ... and the real excitement has not even arrived yet!! This is why I love the Olympics!!! Cannot wait to update you all more on what is still yet to come!!! TWO MORE DAYS!! Go USA!
Jessica
I have been waiting four years to finally play in the Olympic games again and the time is finally here! We have played two games, one against Venezuela and today against Australia. Today was a close game and our first challenge, so it was exciting to see our team respond the way we did. The adrenaline was flowing and the excitement was definitely strong as we pulled off the win!! We play every day until the 19th and I know these days are just going to fly by, but we have been trying to take advantage of the small amounts of free time we have. Every night we have a team meeting and a part of that meeting two players are chosen to "present". In that presentation we are supposed to choose an animal that best represents our team against the competition we are facing the next day. The chosen two start off by doing charades so everyone (players vs. staff) can try and guess the animal that is going to be presented. The first night it was Finch and Tairia, and they chose an American Eagle because of how it represents our country. Their charade was Finch using her enormous wing span to sweep across the room and land on Tairia (who was the prey) ... very funny stuff. Last night the chosen two were myself and Vicky Galindo. We chose to do killer whales, and our charade was Vicky running around the room trying to kill me (for first word) and then we both pretended to breach the ocean to get them to guess whale. Even more humorous as I am sure most of you can imagine ... Oh, and the players are beating the staff 2-0 by the way. The reasons we chose the killer whale were because of how they travel in pods (averaging about 15 per pod, just like our team) and how they pride themselves on communicating to both help each other out and to attack their prey, which is one of our biggest strengths. Vicky drew a picture of some killer whales traveling together through the ocean with the words Fierce, Fast and Family written above them. Tairia had drew a picture of an American Eagle and Coach Candrea taped both pictures up in our dugout for our games. Just some interesting fun stuff on what is going on behind the scenes :)
We also made a trip out to Nike yesterday where we got to meet up with family (instead of from behind a fence after the game) get some really fun free gear and have some amazing food -- they have a chef they brought in from Italy that makes homeade Italian every day ... yum! Speaking of dinners, for tonight's dinner we actually had Mexican food in China! Their is a training center we (U.S. athletes) and they had Mexican tonight. We love eating at the Olympic village with all of the athletes and all the different types of food, but going here was welcomed by our entire team(especially me!!).
#2 Jessica Mendoza
Two Worlds: Softball and Village
Most of you know and have been following how we spend one half of our days : on the softball field. However,there is also another large part of our day that is spent hanging out in the village. It is like two different worlds ... the field is where we compete and is familiar to what we have been doing for almost our entire lives, but the village is like walking into a dream world or something you would see in a movie. Thousands of athletes and coaches from every edge of the earth walking around, eating, trading pins, laughing. Boxers from Poland sparring each other right outside of your dorm. Long distance runners from Kenya and Tanzania zooming by you as you walk to the dining hall. It is so magical, especially for me because there is so much competitive energy and love for sport bottled up in one place, I just want to sit on a bench for hours and take it all in.
Part of the enjoyment of village life is interacting and rooting forall the other USA athletes.The other day I was in the training room next to a women's volleyball player. She had brought in some McDonald's and it smelled so good. She offered me an extra apple pie and I took her up on the offer and scarfed it down. I told her how I had been staying away from that side of the dining hall but had recently been dreaming of their apple pies (they fry them here instead of baking them like they do back home -- yum!) so it was funny that she had offered hers to me. She said it was meant to happen and that if in return I could now start having dreams of their team beating China because that is their next big game coming up. I told her I would and sure enough, they beat China yesterday in a VERY close game that all of us athletes back here were watching together. A bunch of the athletes here knew the story of the "apple pie exchange" and starting giving ME high-fives for helping them out, too funny. It is like one big family, rooting on our brothers and sisters, helping each other out one apple pie at a time :)
Speaking of rooting and cheering, today we spent the morning watching USA's 4X100 medley relay and saw Michael Phelps win his eight gold medal ... it was if time had stopped in the village and everyone was in their rooms doing the same thing. On the last leg of the relay our whole team was yelling, cheering, sending every possible vibe we had to our team to win the gold, and when we did we, and the village, erupted with excitement. We then belted into a chant of "U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!" It was beautiful. To watch history with all those around you share that same excitement and emotion. Pretty cool morning. Then I was off to lunch where I separated from our team to meet some new people. I decided to sit with the Swedish women's handball team. This is a sport that our team has joked about playing in 2012 instead of softball. It looks so interesting and physical, and as it turns out (according to the Swedes) the US doesn't have a team. Perfect! So the Swedish women were teaching me the basics of the sport and even offered to have our team train with them, as long as they could all come visit it us in "beautiful California"!
GOLD MEDAL GAME!
Our nights have been spent eating some of the best food in the world. And Coach Candrea, being Italian, is in heaven with his pepperoni pizzas every night! Last night they took us to a feast of five courses of food including pastas, mussels, clams, calamari, lobster and a ridiculous amount of dessert! All the Olympic training we did has completely gone away in the few days we have been here! But when in Rome ...
We have worked with players and coaches from Belgium, Israel, Argentina, Bolivia, Ukraine, Spain, Italy, UK, Croatia, France, Holland, Ireland and many more. So inspiring to know there are that many people playing this sport. And in just the week or so we have spent here, there has been so much information shared and absorbed. No matter how difficult it can be to communicate off the field with language barriers, it is a beautiful thing to be able to communicate on the field with the game of softball.
All of us enjoyed our time spent in both the UK and Italy and look forward to spreading this great game and growing the international family of softball that much more.
London, England
Coach Candrea and I have just spent the last three days doing clinics throughout the London, England area and it has been an experience of a lifetime. Our first day started off speaking to coaches from all over the world … from Argentina, Bolivia, the Netherlands, Spain, Venezuela, Israel, Belgium, France, and of course the UK. Anyone who thinks softball is not an international sport should have been in this room! We then spent the next three days, from about 9 am to 9 pm every day, talking/presenting to coaches and doing clinics for players ranging from ages 12-30. The attitudes and enthusiasm these young women brought out to the field each day was remarkable and it was so fun to get a glimpse of the softball atmosphere here in England. We shared a lot of laughs because they thought Coach Candrea and my "accents" were really funny and there are a lot of American English words that got sort of "lost in translation" when heard as British English. To be honest, we spent so much time and shared so much with these amazing players and coaches that when it came time to say goodbye, it felt like it had been months we had known and worked with them. It was inspiring for Coach Candrea, Ronnie Isham (Director of national teams) and myself to truly see how vast the softball community is, and how much passion for the growth of this game exists globally. Bob Fromer, Hayley Scott and Mike Jennings were the main people from Baseball Softball UK that not only made this possible, but made it an experience none of us will ever forget.
It will be hard to top the friends and impressions the last few days have made on us in England, but we are now off to Italy to work with many more and I am sure to have a lot more fun stories to share! Cheers from the UK!!
#2 Jessica Mendoza
#2 Jessica Mendoza