I spent the weekend in Chicago and went to the Gold Cup Final at Soldier Field on Sunday afternoon. It was USA v. Panama and it was such a blast. There were a lot of USA fans, a lot of Panama fans, and some fans who thought Mexico would be there instead and were there just to be at a Final. If the US hadn't made the Final, that's how it would have been for me. I would still have gone, but it was so much more fun being able to root for my own team. It was my first professional soccer game and the seats were fantastic, the crowd was fun, and the US Men's National Team won the game and the trophy (WOOOOT!)! I got to see Landon Donovan on his comeback run to try to make the World Cup team next year (I think he's probably a shoe-in at this point), and see some of the younger guys who are trying to prove they should be on the WC team, also. It was exciting to be a part of it and it was such a wonderful time!
Soccer isn't really a big deal in the US. It's been slowly gaining momentum over the last decade or so, especially with the broadening of the Major League Soccer organization in the US. I remember the 1994 World Cup that the US hosted and what a big deal that was. 69,000 people on average attended the world cup games that year, which (surprisingly) is still the record of average attendance at World Cup matches. So far, no other World Cup has brought so many people consistently into the seats to watch soccer as the one hosted by the US nearly 20 years ago.
So, that stat would seem to show that USA loves soccer, yes? Except, they sorta don't. A lot of people around the globe love it, and a lot of people in the US love it, but it's hard, as a fan, to get others excited about it in the USA if they can't watch it on tv each week. They didn't grow up watching it and dreaming of being a pro soccer player because they weren't able to watch the games on tv each week of the season like they could with football, baseball or basketball. I think it could catch on and I think there are several networks that are finally figuring out the market for soccer fans. We don't have to be satisfied to only watch the English Premier League games once in a blue moon, or wait every four years to be able to see some of the World Cup games.
I am still waiting for the day when St. Louis gets an MLS team (c'mon, fools!) and the day when I can watch soccer on tv as regularly as I can see a football game, basketball game, or (ugh) golf during their seasons. MLS is slowly taking off and I've even caught a few of the Sporting KC games on my tv, and I don't have cable. It's a good thing for soccer and for those of us who have been patiently trying to watch it for years in the US. Also good is that a lot of the guys who just won the Gold Cup play in the MLS, not on the European teams. They had a great showing, which is good for MLS and US soccer in general.
Even though it isn't easy to be a soccer fan and stay up to date on what's up with the team, going to see the US play in the Gold Cup Final was awesome. I'll try to upload some pictures later if I can because we had fantastic seats just 16 rows from the field and the crowd was excited and upbeat for the Final. Being a part of that was wonderful and definitely something to remember.
YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!! The US Men's National Team has made it to the finals of the Gold Cup on Sunday! This is fantastic news because months ago I bought tickets for the final in the hopes of seeing the US play! It was a bit of a gamble, since the men have a history of floundering, but this year they've been on a tear. As it turns out, our head coach was booted out of tonight's game and therefore won't be allowed to coach on Sunday, but none of the players were kicked out, so they'll all be eligible to play!
My first international soccer game! My first tournament final of any sport! My first time at Soldier Field! GO USA SOCCER!
Happy Tuesday! It's June already. May went by pretty quickly, it seems to me. We're getting into the swing of Summer now. Road trips! Vacations! Conferences! What do you need for all of these things? Music to help you on the way to and fro.
Weeks ago I watched the (horrendous disaster that was the) Billboard Awards ceremony on tv. I realized it had been a long time since I'd seen a music awards show all the way through and I heard early on that they were going to give Prince a big award and I really like to see Prince perform on these shows. He's always pretty awesome. Well, of course he was awesome, but he was also dead last on the broadcast so I had to sit through a lot of horrible things to get to it. I mean really horrible things like artists kicking fans, terrible performances, even more terrible introductions and uber-pretentious acceptance speeches, and the boos-heard-'round-the-world of Justin Bieber (who is apparently only 19 years old??? Really? I thought the dude was at least in his early 20s by now...seems like he's been around a long time). Anyway, it was basically a broadcast of the worst music has to offer until: the one (really, the only...) highlight of the entire night other than Prince was this performance by Ed Sheeran. I really didn't have a feeling one way or the other about Sheeran's music, but this performance completely made me into a fan. It was beautifully done and so simple. I'd heard the song on the radio but never really listened to it. It's a beautiful song! He's quite talented, I think. So, the evening wasn't an entire waste thanks to Mr. Sheeran and Prince. They saved it. Well done, you! I haven't bought his entire cd, but I did at least buy this song and it's becoming a staple on my playlists:
Summer also brings us soccer! Yay!! A friend of mine went to a Sporting KC match over the weekend and got me a poster of the team. I've never been able to make it up to KC to see them play, but I know they're really really good. I've seen them play on tv a few times. Several of the Sporting KC players play for the national team. Speaking of the national team, they beat Germany over the weekend in Washington D.C.! Germany wasn't at its full strength, but still, it's a top-ranked team in the world and to beat them is a pretty awesome thing. Admittedly, the German goalie did help us out by scoring a goal for our side by accidentally hitting it into his own net, but hey: every little bit helps, you know? I hope it helped the US men's team in their confidence level since they got their butts handed to them by Belgium earlier last week. Neither of those games were World Cup Qualifiers, they were just friendlies for experience. US play a WC qualifier on Friday, so hopefully that goes well. There's still a long way to go to make it into the World Cup, but the US is tied with two other countries for third place at the moment and our region only allows three berths into the World Cup before you have to 'play-in' against a team in the Pacific region for the last spot. I think we can claim one of the top three spots out-right, our team has some really outstanding talent. But, for some reason, we seem to fall flat on our face when we really can't afford to fall flat on our face. The Gold Cup begins next month, too. That's a big deal for other reasons. I had thought that the winner of that competition got an automatic berth into the World Cup, but I'm not so sure now. It might be an automatic berth into the Confederations Cup, which will actually be the year after the World Cup. But, anyway, I hope the US does well. We need experience in international games and the more we have, the better we'll be, I suppose. I'm also hoping for a good showing in the Gold Cup because one of my summer plans includes a trip to the Finals of the Gold Cup this year. My first ever real soccer match! And an international final of a tournament, at that! The last two Gold Cup finals have been Mexico vs. USA, so I'm sorta hoping for something like that again. That would be pretty exciting, I hope. Although, Mexico isn't as good as they used to be and USA is sort of unpredictable. Plus, countries sometimes send their B-squads to the Gold Cup instead of their A-teams who are trying to play for the World Cup qualifiers. Still, CONCACAF's World Cup qualifying matches end in the middle of June and don't pick up again til September so that teams can send their best players to take part in the Gold Cup. We'll see what happens, eh? I've got my fingers crossed that the US will do well and maybe I'll get to cheer on the USA from my really fantastic seats. Regardless, I hope to see a good game no matter who I see play. And, the best part of seeing a final is that you know it won't be a draw! And penalty kicks are super exciting, if it comes to that! They just released the preliminary roster for the Gold Cup for the USA men's team and there are some really fantastic players on the roster including Landon Donovan, who retired and then decided earlier this year that he wanted to play again and he's been fighting to get back into shape and onto the team. I wasn't sure if the coach would allow him back on or not, but he's on the preliminary roster and I'd love to see him play in person. He's not on the final cut for the team yet, but at least he's made it onto the prelim roster, yeah? Other guys that I was really excited to see on the roster is Gooch Onyewu, Carlos Bocanegra (yayay! I thought he might be too old to be on the team, but he's on the prelim list!), Herculez Gomez (I really just want to cheer for Herculez...), Graham Zusi (who had an assist for a goal against Germany over the weekend and normally plays for KC), DaMarcus Beasley, and Bill Hamid and Sean Johnson (who I think are both pretty awesome goalies, and we need somebody who can back up for Tim Howard on the national team...and hopefully either of these guys can become that dependable back-up.). Seeing the preliminary roster made me happy about the chances of the guys making it to the final. The preliminary roster has to be cut down by about 12 guys within a couple of weeks before the final roster is ready, but this is a pretty good team already, I think. Here's hoping!
Happy Friday! The weekend is nearly here. This is my last full week in my current job and I've been running low on tasks left to clean up the grant work. Waiting on aged servers to upload things, etc. Lots of downtime. I've been watching a variety of things this week. Our office is home to the statewide coordinator for National History Day, which is a national program promoting the study of history in middle and high schools. Students make exhibits, documentaries, websites, write papers, and create performances around a central yearly theme and then they are judged on them in three rounds of competition. The statewide competition here was several months ago but the national competition was this week in D. C. The final awards ceremony on the last day is broadcast on The History Channel, so we were all watching it yesterday morning to cheer for the Missouri kids who won. It was a long ceremony, but really kind of nice to see these kids winning and being recognized on this kind of a stage. There were several winners from Missouri, including a surprise win by a middle-schooler from Joplin who created a website on Iran and it won the overall best website! Woooooot! It was really fun to watch and I wish more schools took part in the competition. These kids can win full ride scholarships to universities, several of them (including the girl from Joplin who won best website) won $5,000 dollars for their winning entries. There are a lot of home-school programs that take part, but sometimes the public schools don't participate. It's a shame, I think. I would have liked to have taken part in this if it were offered at my school when I was growing up. Creating an exhibit on a historical theme? Hello? I would have loved that! I've done that as part of my job now! Nobody ever mentioned this program to any class I was ever in, and it's been going on for 30+ years now. Still, NHD is growing and there were schools from every state + D. C., American Samoa, Singapore, and China this year. This was the first year that some of the International Schools took part in the competition and they won some awards for their entries, plus one of the teachers of the International School in Shanghai won an award for outstanding teacher. It was very cool. I've assisted with NDH at the state level in Missouri and Texas, but I'd never seen their broadcast at Nationals before. It was nice.
I've been watching the Euro Cup, too! It's been cool to see the teams playing and the fans cheering and the cities that they're playing in, as well. The Irish fans have made headlines for being awesome, while their actual soccer team has made headlines for being terrible. But, I was impressed by the Irish fans who sang during the entire second half of yesterday's match against Spain. They lost the game 4-0, and it probably could have been worse than that, but the fans were singing and cheering like they were winning. It was really kind of inspiring and beautiful. They were singing an Irish folk song called "Fields of Athenry"; it was really beautiful to hear it in the stadium yesterday. While the English commentators did not stop talking during the match, I heard that on the German and French broadcasts, the commentators did stop and just let the television viewers hear the Irish fans sing for several minutes. This is just a video from someone who was in the press box at the game in Gdansk, Poland.
Interesting personal sidenote about Gdansk: My family hails from there. Along one side, my family comes from the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland (County Kerry), but mostly, we're Prussian, and came from Danzig/Gdansk. My college roommate went home to Ukraine once and made a point to go to to Poland and see Gdansk and take pictures to bring back and show me. I knew it was a pretty city, but I've enjoyed seeing it on tv through this Euro Cup, too! Both Ireland and Poland are on my short list of places to visit.
Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland. Yay for color!
Gdansk at night. Pretty!
Sometimes, when you see the cities and regions that your family comes from, you wonder how bad it really had to be for them to leave there and come to wherever you've ended up, you know? Like, why would someone leave a place like Gdansk that's beautiful and has a beach and seaport, and come to the USA and go to the middle of the country where there's no seaport within hundreds of miles? In my family's case, like a lot of others, it had to do with religion. So, boom. Next thing you know, the family has moved to Protestant-friendly middle America. I recently learned that Omaha is where my family first settled because there was a big Bohemian settlement in Omaha back in the day, so they were able to keep ties to their home culture and community (but practice Luther's teachings without being chased about and killed). I only really learned this because I decided to go to Omaha for the London Olympics Swim Trials and when I mentioned it to my Dad, he said that Omaha was where the family initially settled. I had no idea Nebraska was a part of anything in my family. I don't know if I just didn't pay attention when people talked about it or what, but anyway, while it's not the reason I'm going, I'm going to snoop around and see what I can find about the old part of the city and see what's what. The vacation bug has gotten me pretty badly lately and I'm getting antsy to get going. I've been looking forward to the Trials for months now. I love all things Olympics and this is the closest I've ever gotten to actually going to the Olympics. There are swim trials in the morning (mostly the prelims and some semi-finals) and then they do the prime time stuff in the evening like you would see on tv. So, I have the middle of the day between sessions to explore Omaha and see what's what.
Ireland is a different story. The family didn't have to leave Ireland because of religion, but rather because they couldn't behave themselves. They managed to piss off everyone by fighting a lot. You can only be kicked out of various places so many times before your reputation precedes you and people start to not want you around. They managed to get themselves kicked out of Ireland and then Scotland and then Ireland again, and finally just had to come to America. The family has enough of a reputation still that when my cousin went to the British Isles a few years ago and was visiting a family in Scotland, and he mentioned the family that we come from, the older woman took his knife away and said nobody who came from that family was allowed to have a knife in her house. I don't think she gave it back, either. He had to eat knife-less. From what I've heard, I gather they were still kind of into the rough stuff here and were involved in the Irish gangs in St. Louis in the early 1900s. Somehow, somewhere along the line one of those Bohemian Lutherans took a liking to an Irish Hooligan (or Hooliganess?) and here my family is today! But, still, I think both Gdansk and the Dingle Peninsula are much more picturesque than central Missouri... I would go back and happily live in either place, I think.
I'm keeping tiny tabs on the NBA game between the Heat and the Celtics this evening. I don't really care who wins. I was really happy to have the Oklahoma City Thunder win the Western Division and head to the NBA Finals. That's the team I'm rooting for, (if I happen to catch any of the games) and I don't know enough about the Heat or the Celtics to know which would be the better opponent for the Thunder.
Lots of sporty things are happening this weekend, apparently. I decided not to watch the Belmont Stakes after I'll Have Another was scratched yesterday. I heard it was a good race, though, with Union Rags winning by a nose. Good job. I didn't think I'll Have Another was exactly a super-horse, but I do admit that I would have watched the Belmont only if that horse had been in the race. Mostly because my sports-watching energy has shifted to soccer, as it usually does in June. I watched the two Euro Cup games that were on today. Denmark beat Netherlands, which was a surprise. Germany beat Portugal, which was not, although it was a tough game. Tomorrow morning my Azzurri take the field against Spain. The Italian national team is yet again in trouble with a betting scandal. It's part of the drama of Italian soccer, I think. Wondering exactly how many laws are being broken each time they play. They are scandalicious, but I love them anyway. It's cool that the Euro Cup is being played in Ukraine and Poland. Today they were playing one game in Lviv, but the commentators were saying the city's name a number of different ways. I finally decided that perhaps the British commentator could be saying it correctly in his own way and forgave him his kind of wonky-way of pronunciation, but the American commentator was so terribly off the mark that you could hardly recognize the name of the the city at all. I wouldn't normally be worked up about the pronunciation of a city I've never been to, except that I've heard all about Lviv for years and years and feel that it deserves respect! My roomie in college (and still my good buddy) was from Lviv. She came to Columbia for graduate school and we were apartment roommates for three years until I graduated. She is from Lviv and she pronounces it "Luh-veev". The commentators today were doing all sorts of things to words, but the worst was the American who kept pronouncing it "El-vivvy". I mean, what the hell? Who failed in their job of making sure the talking heads can pronounce the host cities correctly, ESPN? Get on the ball. I hope tomorrow will be better, but I won't count on it.
Over the last couple of weeks, I've come to be amazed by the number of people I know who don't know how to swim. Adults, that is. I don't know why, but I am completely taken aback when I meet an adult who doesn't know how to swim. It's one thing to simply not like being in the water, but to not know how to swim seems really impractical to me. It's a survival skill and I'm kind of surprised at how many people I know that would probably drown if they fell into a lake. I don't always have the ability to hide my emotions on my face and I am pretty sure I've looked at folks like they suddenly grew another head after learning this about them. They may as well have told me they were born on Saturn. It's unthinkable. I almost feel like parents have somehow failed in their upbringing of a kid if the kid reaches adulthood without being able to tread water if they have to...or if they reach adulthood without ever having tasted macaroni and cheese. It just seems very odd to me. I can't imagine having a kid and not making sure they know how to swim. I don't remember learning to swim. My parents put me in a water babies class that had parents in the pool with their infants, teaching the babies how to hold their breath underwater, etc. I obviously don't remember it, and don't remember learning any of it, but I think that's one of the best things my parents could have ever done. And I don't really believe that if your parents don't like the water, you won't learn to swim. My mom was never all that fond of water, but she didn't let that stop her from getting in the pool and making sure I knew how to swim. I admire her for that. And also for not passing on her fear of the water to me. I never found out why she didn't like the water, but I have very few memories of her + water. A few stand out, like when she fell out of a raft during a white water trip down the Colorado River. If you don't like water, the last place you want to be is out of a raft going through rapids, but she did amazingly well and didn't panic at all unlike another rafter who fell out as well and nearly killed himself and others in his panic-stricken state. My mom was very calm on the outside and I would imagine she was worried while being whisked down the roaring river away from those of us still in the raft. That was the most extreme situation I can ever remember her being involved in where water played a big role. Mostly, when I was really little, she would hop waves with me in the ocean and then go back and read a book in her beach chair. My dad was always the one that would go swimming out in the deeper water, and probably that's another reason the fear didn't get passed on to me. My dad would scuba dive, so I had the example of one parent who preferred to sit on the shore (or boat) and the other who preferred to dive under the water and not surface for an hour or so. I did a middle-of-the-road kind of scenario and tended to snorkle and splash about between the two extremes. As a result, I was never afraid of the water itself. I don't like to go out swimming in the ocean as much anymore, but that's due more to a bad experience I had later in childhood during one of those 'middle of the road' scenarios in the Florida Keys. One bad experience shouldn't put you off something altogether. I'm not afraid of water now, just uneasy about certain animals that live in it. I love pools and water parks and things like that. I can't imagine growing up without going swimming. I imagine I'd look something like this sad little elephant, sitting in the super-shallow end while my playmates swim in the deeper sections of the pool. Sad little elephant. So, if you happen to not know how to swim, why not learn now? It's never too late to learn something new.
USA men's soccer team beat Italy today! For the first time in the history of ever! And they did it without Landon Donovan! It was amazing! I watched it online and was surprised to see the USA men actually holding their own and doing well. The Italians were aggressive and the USA men always managed to muck up whatever the Italians were doing. They were pesky and it paid off! Play like that more, USA! I love the Azzurri, and they played well, too. However, the game was played in Italy and for USA to go to Italy's home turf and win?! When they've never ever ever ever ever done it before!? And they do it with a shutout victory?!
And the world goes, 'Whaaaa?!'
I was (and still kind of am) all:
This was just a friendly match between the teams, no tournament title or anything like that was on the line. Still, in case you aren't a fan of soccer but do call yourself a sports fan, you should know that this is a huge huge deal for USA sports and USA soccer in particular.
