Tracy's Diary: Part Two
June 27, 1999
It's Sunday, and we arrived here in Chicago around noon. Everyone is pretty exhausted after yesterday's excitement. It was very emotionally, and of course physically draining. We are staying at a hotel in Downer's Grove which is about 30 minutes outside of Chicago.
We were escorted as a group through O'Hare and received several rounds of applause from random travelers. Seems like the word is out and we are starting to have an impact outside the soccer community. We have received great coverage thus far in the newspapers too. :-) ..... especially USA Today. It is fun to wake up everyday and see articles about us in the sports section.
The rest of the day was pretty mellow. Most of us took naps to catch up from the late night and sluggishness produced from travel. The starters swam in the pool for an active recovery, as well going on a slow jog and stretch. The reserves played a hard 4 v4 game to get some fitness in. As reserve players, it's important for us to maintain our fitness if we don't play, so we run on our own a lot and do fitness either immediately following the game if possible or the day after.
On Tuesday, we had a short but focused one-hour training session. Mama Joy kept Tony to his word and put him on the watch. Nobody messes with Joy. The training field at Benedictine College was as soft as cement and as smooth as a gravel driveway. As a goalkeeper, this doesn't really make you want to get out there and fly around. Fortunately Tony, a former goalkeeper, understands this, so he kept us on our feet most of the session. We worked on kicking and crosses mainly and then played a fun, crazy close-quarters shooting game with the team at the end of training.
On Tuesday, Brandi organized our latest scheme to have fun with Dave Letterman. We took a picture of the team with the "Late Night - Letterman Show" T-shirts on. Okay, it was more fun than I lead on. Per Brandi's direction we all pulled our shorts up really high and let our shirts hang out so it appeared that all we had on was our shirts. We just wore our cleats, no socks, and showed lots of leg. It was pretty funny.
We had the photo enlarged, signed it, and sent it overnight to our new fan Dave. :-)
On Tuesday we found out that Soldier's Field was sold out already! Bummer for anyone that didn't plan ahead! We are playing in front of more fans than the Chicago Fire or even the Chicago Bears for that matter....pretty cool!
Today the reserve players, or the "RP's" as we refer to ourselves, went to visit the SOS Village. The SOS Village is a foster home community. There are only two SOS Villages in the US. One, we visited outside of Chicago and there is one in Florida. However, there are about 400 of them in Europe, thus they are sponsored by FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, which is headquartered in Europe.
We weren't exactly sure what to expect at the village, but what we found was a great bunch of kids that were extremely excited to meet us. We got off the bus, introduced ourselves, signed autographs, met the kids, gave them team photos, and pins. The kids ranged from infants to teenagers and are children who usually have been taken from their birth families because of abuse or poor conditions. Most of the children placed here come with brothers and sisters and remain as a family with new loving parents. The kids were very personable, full of energy, and very well behaved. They sang songs for us and toured us through their houses and community. All of us enjoyed our visit immensely. It's such a great feeling to do something for others. It was a good reminder to all of us on how little things go a long way and how much kids look up to us.
That afternoon's practice was canceled due to thunderstorms. This was the first day we've had off and what did we do with it??? Many of us went to the gym and ran and lifted. None of us really seem to know the meaning of a day off. Still a day without the ball was a nice break. And a couple of us even went to the basketball court and shot around.
Tisha, Fair, and I played a few rounds of horse, (they both killed me...I am the ultimate HORSE) and a few other shooting games. It was a fun change.
That evening was more Scrabble. We had to kill some time until Letterman came on. Dave had received our photo, so he spoke about us crushing FINLAND in the opening game.....he went on and on until one of his stage members clued him in that we had beat Denmark! He was impressed with our photo and gave us some more good air time. WE LOVE DAVE!
Wednesday's practice was supposed to be closed to the public....but someone forgot to tell the public. We probably had 500-1000 fans watching, cheering, and screaming through the chain link fence. It was fun to have so many people watch us just train and encourage us. Afterwards, we did our best to sign as many autographs as we could to thank them, but we never seem to have enough time to get everyone. Our staff is always dragging us onto the bus to make sure we get back to the hotel and get food. Refueling within the hour is critical to a full recovery.
The team got its first scare of the World Cup at training....during a small sided game in which Tony stressed no hard tackles and low contact.....Kate Sobrero rolled her ankle on her own. She just came down on some uneven grass. She said it hurt a lot and we all felt awful for her. She has been playing great for us and we really need her to be healthy. And after six-plus months of intense training, the last thing you want is a freak injury. Fortunately the x-rays came back negative.
The rest of the day she did intense rehabilitation with our trainer, Sue Hammond, got expert treatment from our team doctor, Mark Adams, and massage therapy from one of our two therapists, Jim Faylo. The first 24 hours after an injury are always the most important in determining how long your recovery will be....fortunately for Kate we have a great support team to keep us on the field.
Wednesday afternoon I went to the mall and found a salon to bleach my hair. I had been contemplating lightening it on my own and then upon the urging of my teammates I decided to go whole hog and go platinum! It took two hours and $40....but now my hair is white! My teammates now call me Billy Idol and my husband calls me Peter Schmichael, (I will gladly accept that nickname...he is a world class goalkeeper for Denmark and Manchester United).
That evening, after dinner and a team meeting, we were treated to another fun video tape. This video was put together by Colleen Hacker with the help of our parents. It was a highlight video of many of us playing as kids.
It had Brandi, Lil, Fair, TR, (Tiffany Roberts), Sobs, (Kate Sobrero), Foudy, Dani, Vench, and me. It was hilarious! TR and Sobs played on the same youth team, the San Ramon Snowbirds! We laughed at each other and applauded too.
Thursday....game day! Today is Christie Pearce's 24th birthday! We killed time watching movies, coloring hair, and painting nails. Almost all of the RP's and one starter --.Sobs -- sprayed their hair with red, white, and blue hair sprays. Christie had a red, white, and blue braided pony tail....Saskia had a red, white, and blue stripes patterned along her two french braids, and the others had miscellaneous highlights. We were laughing so hard when we were doing it.
Lorrie Fair has become the team manicurist.....she did almost everyone's nails as miniature US flags! She did a great job! We were even able to coerce our awesome equipment manager Danis, Doc Adams, and Jerry our security guard, to paint the flag on one of their pinkies. All three of them had great "Dr. Evil" poses -- once again a reference to "Austin Powers", recurrent theme on this team! :-)
We left for the stadium around 4:45p for our 7:30p game. We had the Illinois State police escort us into the city. We hit a ton of traffic from rush hour and also for our game. It was fun to watch all our fans walking to the game and in cars get excited as we passed them in the bus. One lady even broke down and danced for us...she was awesome!
Once in the locker room we got dressed and ready had a team meeting and then got psyched up listening to various tunes blasting from our radio. We had a mini dance party and then did some running inside since we had a shorter warmup due to the Italy/Brazil game that was before ours. Walking out onto the field was another great experience....different from Giants Stadium though. At Soldier Field the crowd is closer to you and is more intimate....the sound was awesome!
7:30pm....kickoff! We started shaky again, just like we did versus Denmark. We had poor clearances and just couldn't get control of the ball. Consequently they scored first! They scored about two minutes into the game off a free kick from half field. We failed to clear the ball and they got on the end of it and punished us. They went crazy and we got mad! We knew we had 88 more minutes so we didn't panic and got it together quickly. We generated some good attacks. Their goalkeeper robbed us of a goal by making a great save out the upper corner, and then Brandi nailed the post of a great header. Nigeria was very fast all over the field and they were EXTREMELY physical...at times a bit reckless. We responded to the them and to the referee with our trademark "ICE" mentality.
"ICE" means that we don't retaliate physically or verbally to the opponents when they take us out, nor due we talk trash to the referee. Those sort of battles don't help you win the game and only take you mentally out of the game. We retaliate by scoring goals instead!
We had six unanswered goals in the first half. We were dying on the bench...we were so excited.
Next up, North Korea at Foxboro Stadium.