We had a fun day yesterday visiting Montmorency Falls to see a gorgeous waterfall and to go zip-lining! It was a relaxing afternoon, and we enjoyed a picnic with the US men's master's team.  
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Today we were lucky and had a late start, so we were able to sleep in. Going into our game against Belgium, we had three objectives that we wanted to work on and improve. We accomplished one objective, but the others were hindered by the plethora of stoppages. We were happy to successfully kill two penalties without getting scored on.

Belgium had some beautiful drives and swims across the pool, but we defeated Belgium with a score of eight to zero. 

​For those of you who missed the game, here is a run down of the goals and penalties:

• 1st goal -- Elsa scored after a drive up the end wall by Katrina. Katrina, after making a monster effort, passed the puck to a wide-open Elsa.
• 2nd goal -- Although the refs were not sure who scored it, Cheryl scored our second goal. Despite there being a crowd of bodies in the corner of the goal, she was able to slam the puck in the trough.
• 3rd goal -- Our third goal was a team effort. We are not sure who scored it! 
• 4th goal -- After a nice swim across the pool by Katrina, we were near our offensive corner and we had tons of support. Katrina was able to make a drive to the goal and pass the puck to Bryna. Bryna ran the puck straight to the goal.
• 5th goal -- We went a little off of our game plan but managed to keep the puck in the middle of the pool.  Belgium's defense became scattered, and Kim was able to drive the puck into an open goal.
• Right after the 5th goal, Kim received a one-minute penalty. After a strong push by Belgium, we were able to put it into the corner and keep it there until Kim's penalty ended.
• 6th goal -- When Kim was back in the water, she was able to drive it up the side wall. She scored a few plays later.
• 7th goal -- Our 7th goal was scored by Cheryl, who once again scored while in the midst of a scrum of bodies.
• With just three minutes left remaining in the game, Kim was kicked out again for gloving.
• 8th goal -- With Kim still in the penalty box, we managed to drive the puck nearly the entire length of the pool. Elsa sprinted from the side wall and passed the puck to Katrina. Katrina drove the puck into the trough. 

Final score was eight to zero, but Belgium played well. Despite the high number of stoppages, we had a good game.

We play two games tomorrow! Our first game is #94 against France at 8:28 am EST. Our second game is #111 against Germany at 3:40 pm. We'll be black for both games. 

You can find the live streams here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnOBvfJcIdm9QeKn7zdECNA


Enjoy some pictures from our game against New Zealand and our visit to the falls:

We had an early start to the day with a 7:40 am game against New Zealand. We were at the facility by 6:00 am doing our dryland warm-up, apnea exercise, and mind-set preparation.  

New Zealand went up by one in the first five minutes. Their second goal was scored after Tyera, our fearless captain, was kicked out for one minute for a gloving foul. Unfortunately, we were a bit scattered, and New Zealand managed to run through our defense and score. 

They were able to sneak one more in before half, so we went into halftime down three to zero. However, Coach Phil fired us up during the halftime talk, and we went into the second half of the game with renewed energy. 

The second half of the game was a hard-fought battle. We challenged New Zealand on their end wall, but they were able to keep us out of the trough. New Zealand nearly scored a fourth goal, but one of their players gloved the puck, which resulted in a USA advantage. 

With three minutes remaining, Tyera drove the puck out of our offensive corner and swam hard to the goal. New Zealand wasn't prepared, and Tyera was able to make a clean pass to her forward Bryna. Bryna slammed the puck into the trough. 

New Zealand was able to score one more goal in the last two minutes, so the game ended four to one. 

Now we have the rest of the day off.  After the USA master's men's game, we are having a picnic at Montmorency Falls, which has waterfalls, hikes, and zip lines.

It was a hard-fought game, and we learned quite a bit. We'll come out swinging tomorrow! We play Belgium at 1:16 pm EST, and we will be white. The game number is 73, for those of you who are watching our games on YouTube.  

It was a nice first day as we got to sleep in this morning, except the people that went and cheered for the USA Mens Masters!  Everyone else watched it from the comfort of their beds thanks to the Navisjon Camera System.  

We had a quick video review this morning of our practice game against Australia as well as South Africa.  After that we were ready to head to the pool and play our best.

At the pool we did our dry land warm up and an apnea exercise to warm up our body, lungs and minds.  We headed to the locker room with some sweet jams and suited up.  We were the first team on the pool deck and were able to comfortably organize our gear before heading to the warm up area.  

Once allowed, we jumped in the pool to get started on our water warm up.  Luckily, during the warm up days we practiced our technique to warming up in only one lane.  It was a bit tight, but we are now a well oiled machine.  Only one minor fin/mask collision!

Practice days prepared us well for what was coming.  We breezed through gear check, and then did our standard "Team USA" cheer.  We were in the zone.  We went out strong driving it directly into the the offensive corner.  Shortly after we had our first goal!  This was a penalty goal which is due to Elsa shooting a huge flick into the opponent's hand.  We held our ground for quite some time, but had minor breakdown that Australia took advantage of and went blazing to our goal.   We managed to re-group and had a great group effort starting with a nice drive from BAM (Beth Ann) up mid pool with a pass to Ianna with a sweet under the body move to ever present Tyera.  With speed and grace, Tyera picked up the puck and and slid it easily into the goal.

We ended the first half up 2-1.  Spirits were high at half time and we got a well earned break before diving right into the next half.   The battle was furious ping ponging up and down the wall and occasionally across the pool. Kim got a 2 minute penalty for some reason, we are still not sure after reviewing the video!   After the Aussie advantage puck, they took advantage of our missing player and swarmed the goal, alas they put the puck in the goal and tied the game.  

With our fans now sitting on the edge of their seat, they managed to break it off the wall and sneak through our last line of defense and score another goal.  With the score now 3-2 in favor of Australia, things were looking dire.  We only had 2:20 left on the clock.  We knew we had to get it together.  Coming out of the strike we pushed hard and pushed it onto the wall and down into their corner.  Along the way, with one minute left on the game clock, one of the Aussies got kicked out for the remainder of the game.  We fought ferociously in the corner until we could finally break it off to the side to Elsa, where she drove it across the goal and did a fast curl to pass it under the fins of the Aussies, straight to BAM who slammed it in the goal, tying the score.  With only 30 seconds left, we took the next strike and held it on the wall until the clock ran out. 

 We finished tied 3-3, and were relieved.  We circled up and cheered for a hard fought game, and thanked the players for the good match.

Overall our forwards did an amazing job shutting down the Aussie swings.  The back line put up a solid defense and had some heroic drives up the wall. It was a great game, we are looking forward to facing off with New Zealand tomorrow!

We play in black suits tomorrow morning at 7:40 am.  This is game number 33 in pool number 1.

Here is the link to the live stream of our game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_eRdrXCpjY&t=0s&index=66&list=PLiNacqPSt_DtqiQtvtnPuc-VrRmSXtCiX

 to We have arrived safely in the beautiful and historic Quebec City, Canada.  Traveling from around the United States and one player who travelled from Germany.

We had four days of practice and had some fun friendly games!  We were able to play against: Colombia, Australia, South Africa, Netherlands and Spain.  This was a great opportunity for us to practice some skills and find our rhythm as a team again.

Tomorrow we play our first round robin game against Australia at 2:04 PM (EST) (game # 18)
Live streaming here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToWzbuRryAA

Follow along with our progress:

Schedule and scores should be posted here real time: https://uwhscores.com/t/worlds2018
Live streaming to other games will be posted on this youtube channel: 
​https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiNacqPSt_DtqiQtvtnPuc-VrRmSXtCiX&disable_polymer=true
​Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/USAUWHwomen/
Follow us on Instagram​: @usawomenuwh or www.instagram.com/usawomenuwh/
Website for blog posts:  ​www.teamusawomenuwh.com/

Pictures from the past four days.

Women's Elite Team Support Dry bags 
 
Support The USA Women's Elite Team!  We are selling Drybags.​   The bags will help you to keep your belongings dry, or use it after a tournament/practice to put all your wet gear in and keep the rest of your bag dry! ​

• This water-resistant dry bag is perfect at the pool or for hiking, kayaking, trips to the beach, tailgating, boating and other outdoor adventures. ​
• The bags size is 5L and measures 14-1/2" x 11". 
• Bag is made of durable, water-resistant 210T ripstop polyester with a unique folding and buckle closure that keeps water out.​ 
• ​Simply roll the opening of the bag over itself and then use the buckle closures to fasten the bag shut.​ ​
• The integrated clip near the buckle makes it easy to attach this bag to your other gear.​ 
• Bags are available in blue, lime green and camo green with a custom underwater hockey themed logo (logo will be black on lime green, but not pictured).

These are limited edition and will sell out fast! They are $15 per bag.  This will help send the women to the next world championships!   See below for design. 

Bags will be available this weekend at B@A in Denver. Please see Katrina Finley, Cheryl Skukas or Monica Rojas-Peña to get yours!  

We will also have them at future tournaments like ACCs in Quebec or US Nationals if they don't sell out!  If you are not going to be at one of these tournaments and want one, please contact usawomenuwh@gmail.com and we can make other arrangements (send one home with a teammate or ship it to you for an additional $5). 

​Thank you!

~ USA Women's Elite Team

Help us vie for Gold in 2018! The Team USA women's elite team is now accepting applications for coaches for the 2018 World Championships in Quebec City, Canada. Please download the PDF below for details on coach expectations as well was what info we'd like from applicants.
Please email tyera_eulberg@usauwh.com with your intent to apply by July 8.

Thank you!!

Hello Fans, 

Sorry for the delayed blog post!  We were busy enjoying the rest of our day after our early game.  We played Canada at 7:00 am.  We started playing before the sun came up!   It was a great game and we were able to come out with the victory with a final score of 4-2 to place us 7th for the tournament!  Great game Canada!  Agnes Debrunner did another nice summary of our game.  Check it out below!

Guest Summary:

Elite ladies USA vs Canada - frenemies forever!  The game was at 7 am and I’m embarrassed to say I was late.  I thought I was running late but I would still see it all, but it turns out I actually missed the first 5 minutes.  :(  But when I got there USA was leading 2-0!!  Yay!  USA was putting a lot of pressure on Canada, but couldn’t score again, and then Canada scores with about 30 seconds left in the first half.  Score 2-1, USA ahead.

After the halftime Canada was putting on the pressure and earning a lot of advantage pucks.  At 11 minutes remaining, USA finally gets an advantage puck, but it is then quickly turned around to an advantage puck for Canada again.  The Canadians were relentless!  Canada scored with 10 minutes left, to tie the score at 2-2.  Yikes!

With 8 minutes to go, USA had some high pressure on the goal.  Canada was down a player but played great defense and held off the goal and eventually earned another advantage puck.  Finally, with 6:15 to go, USA scores!  And again with 4 minutes to go - this time with a penalty goal.

With 44 seconds left to go, USA scores yet again, but the goal is called back for gloving.  With 30 seconds left, Missy realizes she hasn’t spent any time in the penalty box yet, so she hurries on over there.  No one scores any goals after that so USA WINS!!!!! 4-2  Yee haw!

The USA elite ladies were thrilled to win their final game.  Breakfast with champagne ensued.

​Quarter Finals:
Today did not quite go as we had hoped.  We played our Quarter Final against Colombia.  We had a very close game and ended up losing 4-3 in the very last seconds of the game (see Agnes' recap below).  Very tough and exciting game.  We played one of our best games as a team.

Semi Final:
Since we lost to Colombia we are knocked out of 1st through 4th place, so we are now playing for 5-8th.  That also meant we had to play two games today.  The second one was against Australia.  We dug really deep and played hard.  We were fit and strong, so it was another very close game but we lost 2-3. 

Since we lost we will be playing Canada for 7th or 8th place tomorrow morning at 7:15 am (3/31/2016 10:15 pm PST, 11:15 MST 4/1/2016 at 12:15 am CST and 1:15 am EST).  If you wanted to watch a game, this would be one of the better ones as far as video quality.  The water should be clear since we are the first game and it finally seems like 24/7 figured out how to switch camera feeds at better times.  I hope you will be cheering for us tomorrow!

​Special Guest Summary:
Agnes Debrunner (mother of our youngest player, and also a player on our Master’s Team) wrote a very nice recap, so why do all the work again!

The next game was the USA elite ladies against Colombia.  The winner of this game goes on to the top four bracket, so it was a must-win game.  I don’t think I can take any more games like that, and I was just a spectator…  Both teams played fantastic games.

Colombia scored a goal first - pretty early in the game, I think within about a minute.  Whoa - they were fast and determined.  USA wasn’t quite ready.

With 3 ½ minutes left in the first half, TeamUSA scored a goal on a penalty shot to tie up the game.

The Colombians came back fast and furious and the puck ended up right in front of the US goal in a crazy battle.  Time was running out and it looked like the US was successful at holding the Colombians off, but, unbelievably, with no more than 2 seconds on the clock, the Colombians managed to jam the puck into the goal.  It was a very impressive effort on the part of both teams.  Halftime score, 2-1 in Colombia’s favor.  Emotions were running high with that last second goal, but USA is obviously still well within reach of winning. No holding back!  This was a serious battle.  The crowds, of course, are going nuts.

One minute into the second half, USA scores on another penalty shot to tie the game 2-2.  Everyone on deck is on edge and cheering like crazy.  Every change in direction of play brings cheers from one team’s fans or the other.  I can only imagine the pressure the ladies felt…

About 2 minutes later, Missy visits the sin bin and Colombia scores while TeamUSA is a player down.  Adrenaline rush for all the fans…   My heart is racing just remembering it!

Somewhere in there, Christina makes a break and swims across most of the pool with two Colombians chasing her down, and she shoots at the corner of the goal and just misses.  On the pool-side video it looked like it must have gone in.  Yikes.  Lots of yelling…  Lots of cheering.

With about 9 minutes left in the second half USA scores to tie the game 3-3. …and the crowds go wild…

No scores for 9 minutes.  Fast and furious back and forth.  Both teams playing great hockey.  Fans being great fans.  Rain being obnoxious.  Back and forth with the puck.  Close to the goal on both ends and successfully defended each time.

With about 1 ½ minutes left, Missy gets another penalty, and the puck is in front of the US goal.  Oh man, tensions are high.  USA one player down and Colombia has the advantage puck near the USA goal.  USA needs to hold them long enough to force it into overtime.

Then Tyera is in the penalty box too.  USA down two players and the Colombians are right in front of the goal.  Fans are screaming!  USA manages to hold them off!  All the fans are counting down.  USA has done it!  But no!!!  The refs called a goal!  The Colombians are ecstatic!  The refs all get together to decide if the goal went in before the time ran out or not.  The discussion goes on for about 15 excruciating seconds.  The goal counted.  Colombia wins with a literally last-second goal.  What a game…  It was exhausting just to watch…

We had a bye day today!  We cheered on all the USA teams in the morning, had a nice lunch and then visited the Cheetah Outreach.  We got to see and pet cheetahs.  They look like such powerful animals!  The pictures below are a few taken today!

The other USA teams all had to play today.  The Master’s Men lost a close game to France 1-3 and play tomorrow for the semi-final (5th through 8th place).  The Elite Men played an exciting game against the Netherlands that  went into overtime, but ended up losing 4-2 in the quarterfinal and then had to play for their semi-final game today against Belgium but they won 3-1!  They play tomorrow for 9 or 10th place vs Canada.  The Master’s Women had two games today.  First was their quarter final against South Africa losing 12-0 and then had to play Canada in the semi-final, which they won 3-2 in overtime!  They play tomorrow against Great Britain for 5th or 6th place.  All of the games today were very exciting to watch!  Nice work Team USA!

We play tomorrow in the quarter final at 8:00 am (3/30/2016- 11:00 pm PST, 3/31/2016- 12:00am MST, 1:00 am CST, and 2:00 am EST).

Fate has been kind to us today if not entirely in our hands.  Going into today we were assuming we were going to win the Germany game and South Africa was going to win the game against Great Britain.  That would have put tied with GB on points.  The first tie breaker is head to head, which was a tie, and then the next tie breaker is goals against.  We needed South Africa to put in 7 goals to stay tied or 8 to bump us up to 3rd seed.

Luckily, South Africa scored 8 points on GB (while they had only scored 7 on us previously), and we shutout Germany.  That was the tie breaker to put us into 3rd seed in our pod.  We made it by one goal.  Phew!
3rd seed is so much preferable both because we are now in the top 8 gaurenteed, and also have a better schedule.  WE HAVE A BUY DAY!!!!!  Whohoo, tomorrow we take a rest.  This will greatly help us hit the semi-finals round with intensity.  

We play Colombia at 8:00 am after our rest day and that will be a very very hard game.  We made some small tweaks to our positioning during our easier games that I will pay off!!!

For the other USA teams: the Men’s Elite lost to France 1-4, the Men’s Masters tied Netherlands 3-3 and lost to #1 seed Australia 2-4, and the Women’s Masters lost to Canada 4-2 and Great Britain 6-1. Looks like there should be some exciting games tomorrow!

We are going to do some cheering and then visit a Cheetah Outreach in the afternoon.