Olympic News - From Bernie

What a day in the world of water polo!

We had quite the exciting day today! First off was the B bracket, Hungary and Australia, both teams won on the first day of games and they did not disappoint the crowd today. The game ended in a tie, Hungary was able to score at the end of the game to stay within reach of winning their bracket. Next up was Greece and Netherlands, both teams lost in their game openers, so this game was very important. Greece was the Silver medalist in 2004 Athens and today they lost, which knocks them out of contention to advance.



In the A bracket, we started out our game with Italy, down 2 goals. Some of you may have watched and it was quite the nail biter…we were able to battle back and gain the lead. At one point we went up by two goals. Unfortunately, we did not play smart defense at the end of the game and gave up two ejections which lead to the Italians two goals to tie the game. The next game was Russia vs. China. Similar with our game against China, it was high scoring, a lot of back and forth scoring opportunities for both teams. The difference for Russia was China won, which knocks Russia out of contention to advance to the medal rounds. The Russians, just one month ago, was crowned European Champions and two weeks before that, won the World League Super Final. This goes to show, that every game at the Olympics is like a lifetime. It does not matter what you have accomplished in the past, you must put everything you have on the line to have a chance to win.



Tomorrow we will have a chance to train twice, watch some video and clean up some points on defense. Even though Russia is out of contention, we still need to play well on the 15th when we play against them. If we win, we have a chance to advance 1st or 2nd out of our bracket…It will depend on how Italy plays against China to see who will advance first. If Italy wins by more than one point, they will advance first.



I hope everyone is doing well back in the States! I will try to use my camera in the next two days to send more photos, but as you all know, that is not my strong suit :)



Wan An! (Good Night!)

Bernice