We had a fun final day of the tournament.  Sorry for the delay in this post, we were having so much fun at the banquet and traveling home or other islands we didn't get a chance.  Anyway here is our final day summary of the Pacific Coast Championships.

Our day started off early with our first game against Canada women.  We knew this would be a good game and we would have to play our game well, and we did.  We won with a final score of 5-3. 

The second game of the day was against Australia.  They came out hard and we were exchanging points for a while.  We finished with winning score of 3-2.

Our third game of the day was the last of the round robin/pod play and was against The Melting Pot.  We had heard rumors that they were gunning for us so we were ready for a rough game.  We played hard and played our game.  The final score was 6-1, and we were going into the playoffs undefeated.

Since we were seeded number one, our team had to ref two games in a row in two playing areas.  This meant that the majority of our team would be in the water without playing.  Not exactly rest time, but that was what the schedule was for the day.  We were not thrilled, but we made it work. 

We had a few game break before playoffs started.  Our first playoff game was against New Zealand.  This was a tough game.  New Zealand came out strong scoring the first (and only goal) in the first couple of minutes of the game.  There was a lot of back and forth in the pool and we were doing a good job shutting down their swings.  We unfortunately were just unable to get the puck in the trough when we were in their end.  This was our first loss of the tournament with a score of 0-1.  This was an important game.  This took us out of the final game playing for 1/2 to playing for 3/4.   
 
We only had a one game break before our final game playing for 3rd place against Canada.  We had a team meeting and revisited our strategy  and our team strengths.  The game started fast, both teams wanted it.  It was a tough game, but Team USA was able to hold it together and we made some beautiful plays that lead to goals.  It was a great close game with a final score of 3-2.  We brought home third place!

After the final game we took some cold showers and went to the Luau Banquet.  It was a fun week and we are sad to be going back to real life.

The Pacific Coast Championships has begun!  Team USA women played in the mixed division (all teams must have at least 2 women in the playing area at all times).  We made it through the day undefeated!

The mixed division was broken into two pods.  Our pod had 5 teams.  The day started off bright and early against Can Water Cougars.  This team seemed like a mix of players from Canada.  CanWater Cougars were fun competition, but we ended up with the victory with a final score of 7-2.

Game two was against the Mermaids (also a team of all women).  This game we were able to work on our plays right off the strike, so we had some fun making forward progression right away.  The final score was 12-0.

The third game of the day was against New Zealand.  We played them in the friendly game, but the team we played today made some changes that put us on hour heels.  We were able to pull off the win with a score of 4-2, but this team was much stronger than the team we played on Wednesday.

The Melting Pot was our forth game of the day.  Going into this game we had the same record, so we were looking forward to good game.  Right away, they came out strong and scored the first goal.  This made us a little nervous, but we able to maintain our composure and hold them off for the rest of the game.  The final score was 5-1. 

The final game of the day was a crossover game between the top seed in our pod and the second seed in the other pod.  We played the Amazons. We heard that they had made some changes since the friendly games, and it showed in their play.  We were starting to feel tired from the previous four games and we finished the first half tied at 2-2.  During the second half something changed.  We were able to keep our legs kicking and keep our goal defended.  We held them off and were able to finish with a final score of 6-2. 

It was a fun day of hockey.  We are looing forward to seeing what tomorrow has in store for us. 

Day 3 began with an early day, with the team (or the ones not stuck in traffic) arriving at the pool at 8:00 in the morning. After wriggling into the awsome USA leggings, we got some great pictures in our Bentfish Ts (Thank you Bentfish!), as well as some head shots.

We got in and did a full warmup and dove straight into the game against the Amazons. Everyone played fabulously, with some amazing drives from our forwards and lots of impressive stops from the backs. Nobody got kicked out at all! We got out of the game ready for our much anticipated game against Canada.

In our break between games we got a great talk from Leslie Maisey (sorry if I spelled it wrong!) about nutrition while we are training. Hopefully now we will be healthy and strong after each and every game! We also stretched out our lungs and pretended to be fish as we learned how to lung pack. It was almost impossible not to laugh!

The next game was against Canada. We played another wonderful game, with everyone showing off their skills that they have been developing for months. It was great to see! After some hard fought goals, time was called and we went to the wall tired! We had held our own!

And finally, congratulations to our final team! Welcome to our final two players, Tricia Simon and Christina Jones.
Here is the final team roster, in no particular order:

Tyera Eulberg
Katrina Finley
Missy Kehoe
Kim Skukas
Ianna Debrunner
BAM (Beth Ann Morley)
Leah Ettema
Rachel Carrington
Tricia Simon
Brittany Borgiasz
Christina Jones
Jennifer Smith


We are excited for the tournament to begin tomorrow bright and early.  We will be playing in the mixed division.  Keep an eye out for more updates tomorrow evening!

-Ianna Debrunner

Day two of friendly competition is complete here in Hawaii!  Tomorrow is our final day of friendly competition before the official Pacific Coast Championships begin.  We spent a lot of time in the pool and the sun so we are starting to get some nice tans and sunburns!

Today we started our day off with practice time where we did some drills to work through scoring strategy.  We played our first game against the Amazons this afternoon.  The Amazons are a team of strong women from around the world.  For this game we decided to sit some key players.  This gave an opportunity for some ladies to step up and we executed some nice plays and drives.  It was a challenging and fun scrimmage.

We had another practice time which we invited the USA men to scrimmage us.  This was a good opportunity for us to practice our defensive strategy.  Thank you to Team USA men for scrimmaging us!

For our final scrimmage of the day we played Australia again.  This game we sat some other key players for the first half.  Australia made some adjustments and were stronger than yesterday.  We spent a lot of time playing defense.  For the second half we mixed up the line up and this re-invigorated the team so we were playing more offense.  Australia definitely stepped up and played well today.  It was a good scrimmage.

Friday is our final day of friendly play before the official tournament begins.  We have two games tomorrow against the Amazons and Canada.  We will also be finalizing the 2016 Team USA Women's Elite roster which will be attending the World Championships in South Africa!  It will be an exciting day for Team USA!

Hello Friends, Fans and Supporters

We just finished our first day at the Pacific Coast Championships (PCCs) in Hawaii.  These first three days are filled with friendly competition, as well as pool time for us to work on some skills and drills. In the friendly matches, there is no official score taken; it is a time for us to fine-tune our positioning and formation.

We spent the first portion of our pool time perfecting our warm up and getting used to the nice tiled pool bottom.  

We are still finalizing our team roster so we played with 13 people in the water (the other teams played all their players as well).  Our first friendly game was against Australia.  They gave a good showing.  We do not have an official score, but we only had two goals scored on us and we definitely put more in their trough, with Katrina and Leah scoring the majority of the goals off some beautiful assists with Tyera.

We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging on the pool deck in preparation for our game against New Zealand (defending 2013 World Champions).  We were pleasantly surprised with an unofficial score of 9-1. This game our midline -- Tyera, Kim, Ianna and Leah -- rocked the goals!

Overall, today was a nice warmup to remember what it is like to play together and work out the kinks in our formation.