Community Weblog - [ Team 180 ]

In Closing

It was a pleasure to spend concentrated time with your daughters.  All throughout the weekend I was impressed with their ability to come through as needed – both on and off the field.   Thinking that it would take 15 minutes to clean up the mess at a dinner table and get themselves out to the lobby – I asked them to start packing things up.   Imagine my surprise when they were in the lobby waiting within 3 minutes.  They are truly elite girls on so many levels.  You have much to be proud of. 

Cheers from MD,
Whitney Luckett for all the Pit Crew, aka Dan Curtis, Cheryl Snider & Tim O’Donnell

Sunday at All Star LAX

Sorry this didn't get out last night - it was a long, long day.   On the chance that your daughter is JUST as communicative as mine – we’ll share our adventures of the day with you anyway.  One of our chaperones arrived here bewildered at the amount of work required by the older girls.   Who knew that you couldn’t stay at a bed & breakfast and then just swoop in and out for games?!  (For the record – said chaperone was seen many times schlepping a HUGE green military bag full of supplies across acres of hot dusty fields.)

Our first game of the day was vs. Caterham from London.  In many respects is was a great game.   The girls all played well and we dominated the game.   Clare, Steph, Shelby D, Logan, Megan, Kelsi & Paige ALL put balls in the net.  We finished the game saluting the team in the traditional British manner.   The girls had a great time – but who wouldn’t after winning your first game 9 to 3?  An optimistic start to the day...

We had another hour before returning to the same hot dusty field for a game against the Capitol 10 team from MD.  Boy… it was only 11 AM and the heat was pretty bad.  One friend of the team who’s a lax playing sophomore at Duke had a sister on the Capitol team.  The girls didn’t have a lot of shots on goal, but what we did shoot, went in.  Megan, Vivi & Kameryn all came away with goals.  Maxine successfully faced down 3 free position shots on goal.  The girls came away with an impressive 3 to 2 win over a MD team!

Subway sandwiches were delivered – 9’ of them - and the girls rested in the shade for their longest break of the day before we faced a very strong PA team.  The temperatures were climbing and it was so dry on the field that I had flashbacks to the rodeo as I watched the girls go down for the ball.  Our defense against this team was terrific.  The PA team must have aimed for our goal over 20+ times, but only came away with 3 goals.   Logan & Megan both put balls in the net.  Sam said that we need to put more shots on goal.  But this was a great game against a very strong East Coast team.  We came way with a 2 to 3 loss.  All the girls play really well.

It just kept getting hotter & hotter.  Thank goodness for mid-game water breaks and the wall of liquids that the pit crew purchased!  The girls heard Sam’s plea for more shots on goal and offered up almost triple the amount of shots on goal against the M&D team from the DC metro area.  Unfortunately they had one heck of a goalie and were shooting just as well themselves.  Shelby, Helen & Kameryn scored in this game and we came away with a very respectable 5 to 6 loss.   

We were getting down to the crunch time – Connie had to leave us and Sam, Alexa & Caroline were literally running between the ’09 & ’10 games for the remainder of the day.  Our penultimate game was against Shore Velocity, a team against which we suffered a humiliating defeat at Lax by the Sea.  One must qualify that we had more subs than they did, but the girls were more than happy to return the favor from Jersey and defeat Shore 7 to 3.  Steph, Logan, Vivi, Kelsi, Paige, and Clare all had the pleasure of scoring. 

It was 5:30 and boy was it hot… The girls actually played around on the playground – and we do have happy snaps to pass on.  The enthusiasm for running around for one more game of lax was waning fairly seriously.  In fact, our opponents, Lady Roc from Rochester, NY, felt similarly inclined.  .  Kameryn and Logan both scored, leading us to a 3 to 2 victory.  

We stopped off at a Sandy Point State Park just over the bridge back to Anapolis where the girls took a swim in the Chesapeake Bay.    Almost all the girls jumped in and had a great time.  It was truly a joy to see them swimming out there framed by the majestic  Bay Bridge.

Warning to Readers

PLEASE remember that these postings come from a fan only.  (We leave the coaching up to the experts…)  I love the game & spending time with the girls, but I’m not an expert and certainly make mistakes.   I apologize up front if I’ve mixed up girls’ names or missed important events, but I’m a novice at this.  This email was created with the best of intentions…

We have pictures to pass on – but time is running out here…  I’ll get them out to you later this week.

Team 180 '10 Saturday Update

What a day it’s been for Team 180.  At breakfast we learned that ’09 was down 2 players to 13 because of illness.   We made our way to the fields and arrived early enough to see the final game for the ’08 girls.  It looks as though several 180 girls have made division one schools – a big credit to Sam & the program our girls are in. 

Our first match of the day was vs. a MD team, Green Turtles with Alexa coaching.  The MD team came out fairly strong and we were a bit taken aback.  They scored 2 goals right away while we found our legs again.   The 25 minutes total time format was pretty new to us all, but we figured it out and the game ended 3 – 4.  We definitely rallied in the end.  

Our schedule over the course of the day was VERY spread out – so the girls had lots of down time between games.  The weather was pretty hot and humid – though not devastatingly so.  Sam needed to steal 2 players to help out on the ’09 team, so Annie & Chapin were gone for our last 2 games.  Our second game was against CT Lax Futures.  The girls played excellent defense and spread the scoring out.  We finished the game out 7:2. 

We had almost 3 ½ hours to wait for our last game at 7:00PM.   The good thing was that a breeze blew up.  We played Westchester Elite 2 (NY).  The final score there was 3:3, but in this novice’s opinion, we should have won the game.  The ball seemed to have a will of it’s own and was jumping out of sticks right and left.  Other than that, we played pretty well and the girls had a great first day.

Kent Island is not a high tech haven.   There are no Starbucks to log in at - so it will probably be another late update tomorrow.  The girls games are much closer together tomorrow, so we'll be able to get a rhythm and keep to it.  Hope things are well back home. 

Greetings from MD

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