Wake Forest Athletics
Lauren Crandall's Diary From Santiago
9/25/2005 12:00:00 AM | Field Hockey
Sept. 25, 2005
Santiago, Chile - -- Okay so before I get into how the rest of the tournament games went, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on all the strange incidents that happened while in Chile.
One of the moments that comes to my mind right away happened a few days ago to one of our teammates. Now usually after the games the teams are swarmed by little boys and girls asking for autographs and the apparently famous pins that no team seems to have but are constantly asked for. Of course this was a big shock for our team, considering not many people in the United States even know what field hockey is, so we were astounded and thrilled to be treated like this.
However the swarmings have gotten more and more intense as the tournament progresses; at one point a little girl came up to one of our teammates and in the cutest broken English asked if she could touch her...she then poked our player in the arm with an amazed look on her face and then ran away giggling - way cute. Even grown men have gotten into the excitement and have asked to get individual pictures with some of us - we pretty much ignored the weirdness of this event and just embraced the moment of popularity.
way, those are the wonderful moments we have had with the fans down here.
We have gotten a lot of support from the surrounding fans here at the Junior World Cup - I think a lot of it comes from the Chilean fans cheering against the teams we are playing, but nonetheless its great to hear foreign voices chanting "USA USA USA" (obviously a shout out to all of the parents and the Golden Girls who start the cheer!).
So I left off last time leaving you in suspense about the Spain game - well it did not put us where we wanted to be, in the semifinals, but it did prove our "never say die" attitude. Before we get to the game I would just like to give a shout out to fellow demon deacon Michelle Kassold for a clutch dodgeball victory to begin the day.
Our game against Spain was not until 4, and most of us didn't want to play the sitting and waiting game so we played an intense game of dodgeball in which the last players were your Wake Forest representatives: Jamie, Michelle, and myself. Michelle successfully eliminated both Jamie and I in a thrilling victory for her team.
Okay so anyway, back to the real game... We came back to tie the game in the last three minutes after being down 4-2 with only 10 or so minutes to go. We didn't come away as winners, but we definitely left our American mark on the game. Now this next thing shows you just how close the points were going into the final game - since we tied Spain and each were only held to one point, Australia (who was at the time 4th in our pool) was able to move up to 2nd in our pool with a win over England - and so they did. So the Netherlands and Australia ended up being the top two and our high hopes of shocking the world and being one of the top 4 teams in the world were put to death. It's hard to describe the heartbreak we all suffered - we all know that odds were against us this tournament and people did not expect much out of us - but that's what makes it so hard. We were so close to proving US Field Hockey to the world...yet fell a bit short. But anyway, this tournament definitely set a new standard for US Hockey and one that we will continue to improve on. Now that we know how close we came and what all it will take to be up there in the rankings. Consider us officially motivated...
Our tie to Spain put us in the 5-8 possible rankings, drawing our biggest Pan American rival Argentina - a team that has proved to give us many difficulties.
Lets just say that our first meeting with them resulted in a 7-0 humiliation, but we have been learning ever since then and felt prepared for our next match.
We played them yesterday, Friday and the first 67 minutes of the game were evenly fought. The last 3 minutes were a bit different. They scored with 3 minutes remaining and it proved to be too much for us - they finished another goal two minutes later. We suffered our second loss of the tournament - not a fun thing to do. But with all losses we learn more and more.
We had the next day off and that is where I am today. Jamie, Michelle, and myself have spent most of the day freakishly checking the Wake Forest and Maryland websites to find out the score of our field hockey game vs. Maryland - and to that I add: WELL DONE LADIES!!! You guys are ridiculous and we love you!!
Tomorrow we finish off the tournament playing for 7/8 against South Africa, which should be a great match up. Good luck to all the Demon Deacon sports teams that play this weekend! Represent...and we're out...from Santiago, Chile - adios!
