Day 4- Double Header vs France and Germany

Today we had our first double header of the tournament.  We had an early game against France and then this afternoon we played Germany.

There were a lot of calls made in the first game.  More of them were called against France.  We executed some of our plan fairly well, but other pieces we could have done better.  We spent a lot time grinding the puck up the wall, even the commentators said it looked more like a men's game than a women's! France received more penalties than we did, but they did a great job preventing us from scoring while they were down a player or two (from penalties).
Highlights of the game against France:

• France scored the first goal (a penalty goal) against us at about 3:30 left in the first half.  
• USA put our first goal in at 4 minutes into the second half (by Tyera Eulberg).
• France put in their second goal with 7 minutes left into the second half.
• Jen scored the second USA goal with 4 minutes left in the game.
• France scored their third goal with 2:30 left in the game. 
• We tried hard to get it back in their end, and France even had players in the penalty box, but they did a great job shutting down our drives to hold onto the victory.

We ended the game with France winning 3-2.

We had to shake the loss of the first game off since we had another game in the afternoon against Germany.  We went home, ate lunch and reviewed the video between games.  We returned to the pool refreshed and with a plan and some things to work on for our final game.

We went into this game hoping to win, so we also had some skills we planned to work on.  Germany played a great game.  We played in their half of the pool for the majority of the first half, but Germany did a great job keeping the puck out of the goal for more than half of the first half!

Highlights of the game against Germany:

• Bryna took a 2 minute penalty for an obstruction foul.
• We finally scored our first goal at about 6:30 in, by a beautiful drive and a pass by Tyera to herself, and then did a great swim into the goal up the end wall.
• Second goal was called a penalty goal, but would have been put in by Elsa.  It was called a penalty goal because of gloving by Germany.
• The third goal was scored after an off the wall and passed out to Katrina who passed it back into the wall to Monica who put the puck into the goal.
• The 4th goal was a beautiful cut up the middle to the goal by Kristin.
• The 5th goal was after successful penalty shot by a big flick from Tyera into the goal with Kim as the support.
• The 6th goal was scored by Monica after a drive swing across by Katrina who did a move to get the puck under the defenders to Monica who had a nice swim into the goal.
• The last 3 minutes of the game got a little crazy.  Monica was sent to the penalty box for gloving for 2 minutes with 2:30 left in the game.  Then Bryna was sent to the penalty box for 2 minutes for stick infringement with only :45 seconds left in the game.  We were able to run out the clock and keep the score at 6-0.  

We had a fun game against Germany and thought the German ladies were playing very well!  Keep up the good work ladies!

Tomorrow we play at 2:04 pm against Australia (again).  Game # 140 in pool 2.

Here is the YouTube link to the live stream: www.youtube.com/channel/UCnOBvfJcIdm9QeKn7zdECNA/featured