Welcome back to my athletic blog. I look forward to another outstanding year with our teams and hope to see you at the games. In this posting I will write about our recent trip to England with the Cowgirl soccer team.
The NCAA allows an athletic team to make a foreign trip once every three years. Recently our women’s soccer team spent just over one week in London. Here are a few thoughts from a hectic eight days that left all of us with numerous memories.
1) The soccer team stayed in the dorms at Chigwell school,
which has been in existence since the 1600’s. William Penn is the school’s most notable graduate and the school motto is “Find a way or make a way,” which is highly appropriate since each of the ladies had to raise over $2,500 to make the trip.
2) It’s hard to complain when you spend a week training, playing and sightseeing in August and the temperature never breaks 78 degrees. I don’t know if it is worth going a week without chips and hot sauce-but it’s still nice.
3) The alumni line of Melanie Muir, Kelley Wood and Becca Neal helped pace the Cowgirls thru the three matches, and Neal scored a goal in the final match.
4) Great Britain might have made major strides in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher became the first women prime minister. They have not made such noteworthy strides in women’s soccer. The women’s professional league is viewed more as a curiosity and the support seems lukewarm at best.
5) Harrods’s of London is known as the store that has “everything, for everyone, everywhere.” Except Tour De France merchandise. As a cycling fan I thought that Harrods would still have some memorabilia from the tour that started in London this year. “We weren’t allowed to sell the merchandise” a salesman in the bicycle store of Harrods’s explained. Possibly because I can barely afford anything in the store--it made me feel good to know there was at least something the store did not have.
6) Our tour guide was a friendly woman named Bethan who never got tired of all of our annoying questions (“Now explain one more time, who will be the next King of England?”), Bethan was a natural fit for our team-she took no guff from anyone and is a second generation Arsenal ticket holder.
7) Trust me, the folks in London are just as annoyed with the Beckham circus as you have become. We were told that Beckham once played on the pitch (Brit for soccer field) at Chigwell that the Cowgirls played on. Hard to verify but easy to turn into a good story.
8) While the Cowgirls were busy looking for new music to bring back for their warm up cd, I did just the opposite. It just seemed appropriate to fill up my IPod with music from my favorite British groups. There’s something about a morning jog in Great Britain while you listen to The Clash’s London Calling.
9) Imagine sitting on the dugout bench at Yankee Stadium. Or being able to slap the Play like a Champion Today sign at Notre Dame. Those are similar to the emotions the Cowgirls felt as they got to take a tour of the Chelsea Football Stadium. Not only did the Cowgirls get to see the locker rooms and press room of the 2007 FA Cup Champion, but they also got to sit where manager Jose Mourinho and his team sit during a match. I don’t really know if Mourinho is the “special one’’ but it’s obvious that seeing a match at Chelsea is a special event.
10) On our last night in London we saw a football match between the Bolton Wanderers and the Fulham Football Club. The match was played in a wonderfully archaic stadium which is one of the oldest in the Premiere League. So old that there is no jumbotron to watch replays-even though LG is one of their major corporate sponsors.
11) Finally I want to thank all of the Cowgirls for helping make this such a unique journey. I know that this trip helped improve your soccer skills and team chemistry. I also hope that the trip will help you in your next history, literature or humanities class. Or at least help you in your next game of trivial pursuit.
Cheers,
John Neese
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