CAL CUP and more

Hello everyone!

Sorry it's been a while since I last blogged. Our team has been all over the place the last few weeks!

At the end of the Argentina series, the team went it's separate ways, some returning back to California, and some staying on the East Coast for a little quality family time. For those of us that returned to California, we came back to the West Coast for a Memorial Day Weekend tournament called California Cup (better known as just Cal Cup) in Moorpark, CA. This tournament, as many of you know, has high school, social, mixed and a super division. Teams come from all of the United States, as well as from the world to play. Countries represented included: Canada, Mexico, Argentina, England, Scotland, Holland, Trinidad & Tobago, as well as the United States.

The team I played for, Rush'd, is based out of San Diego, CA and consisted of quite a few National Team players. In our super division, was a team comprised of the Mexican National Team, a team with Canadian National Team players, a club team from Canada, a club team from Argentina, and a few other American teams.

Before I explain more, I would like to thank the Langfords for allowing so many of us to stay with them for the weekend. It was very generous and I would not have wanted to stay anywhere besides Hotel Langford! On top of that, we were never lacking entertainment with Ryan, Rutger, Jazzy, and Michael as our house mates for the weekend!

The weekend ended on a high note for team Rush'd, taking down the club team from Argentina in the final game with a 2-0 win. Although we were still playing hockey and competing, Cal Cup was a nice change of pace for a lot of us because we were just playing for fun with no pressure on the outcome.

As we returned to San Diego for practice, the team began to split again, as many left to attend Keli Smith's in Virginia this past weekend. Another fun-filled weekend ensued! Congrats Kel!!

So, this week has left just 9 of us at practice before we all finally head off to our respective High Performance sites at the end of the week in preparation for National Championships. Although practices are a lot more intense (because we get a lot more reps in a short period of time), they are still fun, especially when we pull out the ball machine. (It is like a pitching machine where the coaches shoot balls at us). As you can imagine, it hurts if we mistrap the ball and get hit. So with that in mind, I'll leave you with the words of Nick Conway: "You don't need shinguards if you just trap the ball."