April 23, 2007

Amsterdam: This past Friday we hosted the Rhein Fire in our first home game at Amsterdam Arena. This venue is absolutely amazing with state of the art technology including a retractable roof for those not so perfect days for sporting events. The Arena is also the home to the well known Professional soccer team in Amsterdam named Ajax. Now I am still a little confused on how to pronounce it, but I always pronounce it Ayax and I haven't been beat up for saying it that way so far.

We started the game out strong by recovering the opening kickoff after a hard hit by my teammate knocked the ball loose. From there it was a back and forth game through the rest of the half. My first field goal attempt of the year was from 38 yards, although I hit the ball solid, I missed wide left. The score at half time was 7-6 in our favor. I finally got a chance to redeem myself at the end of the third quarter when I connected on a 28 yarder to put us within 3 points going into the fourth quarter. Our final drive ended on a 4th and 2 play in which our quarterback Drew Olson(UCLA) threw a pass to Noriaki Kinoshita(Japan) and was pushed out of bounds a yard short of the first down. The final score was Rhein 16, Amsterdam 10.

Saturday consisted of a pool workout, meetings, and film review before we were off for two days. Sunday I went down to Amsterdam and walked around the city and visited a handful of tourist attractions. First stop was the diamond factory since one of Amsterdam's many names is "the city of diamonds" to learn more about the types and characteristics as well as to see the whole process of how diamonds are cut down. Next stop on the day, which probably should have been the last stop was the Heineken Brewery. Although the Brewery is not a working plant, they had plenty of beer to distribute to their guests. Each guest received three drink tokens and a gift token. After the tour I visited the gift shop for souvenirs for my other family members and to pickup the free gift. Our final stop before heading to dinner was the Vincent van Gogh museum. It houses more than 200 of his paintings as well as an extensive collection of works of art by other 19th-century painters and sculptors. Today, some of my teammates are going to do a photo shoot for FHM the Netherlands (I am not sure if it means the same or is the same as the magazine as the US magazine) before heading over to a local hospital to spend some time with kids who have been diagnosed with cancer. I volunteered my time but only a few players may go at a time. I was told there will be more opportunities and I will have my chance to go and spend some time with them.

This week we travel to Berlin on Friday to play the Thunder on Saturday evening at 6 PM Berlin Time. Hopefully next week I will have good news to report back about the outcome of the game. Until next week

P.S. I want to say good job to Dan Zeidman for hitting a 53 yard field goal in the Bengals annual spring game!