Sept. 6, 2007

This is week two of the Bengal Diary and it has been a great two weeks. We had our first road trip this last weekend; we played in a tournament in Vegas at UNLV's field. We played against ASU and Cal State Fullerton. It was awesome! And of course incredibly hot! I believe the top-out temperature was about 105 or something like that. WOW, that's hot! But we survived and had a great time playing.

Our first game was against the ASU Sun Devils, on Friday at 5:00 Vegas time. That was a tough game--we lost 1-0--and as our coach put it, a small margin between us and a top 25 team. This means, we are a good team! We played well against ASU and had a lot of chances to score, but unfortunately we were unable to do so. But we capitalized on one of our chances agaisnt Cal State Fullerton.

We came out and played a better game against Cal State Fullerton. In the first five minutes of the game, we finished a goal opportunity. Jana Boehler beat two Fullerton players, took it to the endline and dropped it back to me and I took a touch and shot it far post, beating the keeper. It was so awesome! In fact, my goal was almost identicle to Jana's goal against UVSC. It was a perfect way to start the game. Unfortunately, late in the first half, they capitalized on one of their chances and tied the game 1-1. Thats how the game finished, but was not the end of the excitement. We had many more chances to score; I think we made their keeper look better than she was. HA just kidding. But we did make her work a lot.

Our coaches challenged us this weekends. The challenge came from our coaches asking us to play positions we not used to. This is especially difficult considering the talent and skill of our opponents. I believe we rose to the challenge and showed really well. Regardless of where players were asked to play, everyone gave it their best effort and played really hard. A phrase we have on the team, given us this weekend by Hideki, is Shin Gi Tai; this means Heart, Skill, and Body. I think this describes us almost perfectly. Another phrase we use, which goes hand in hand with this phrase is don't show our oppoents our weakness. No matter what happens, we play with both of those phrases in the back of our mind and this allows us to play harder and through every obsticle. We are a talented team and we are going to the top.