Great Wall Of china

Today when we arrived back in Beijing, we were told that we would be heading to the Great Wall of China. This is something that everyone has wanted to do. So at 1:30 we loaded the bus. Kari and her crew could not go since they had to stay back and prepare for there match. So Jair and I took the trip and planned on taking lots of pictures. As we boarded the bus it started raining and no one cared that it was raining since it was a 2 hour bus ride to the WALL. We arrived and it was still raining and it was in one word WOW. For one hour we walked the wet slick wall and took many pictures and saw many of the history of the wall. So enjoy the photos

jair and kermit

Match day Three

Yesterday the game between Ivory Coast vs Australia was a very good game we had 2 cautions and the final score was 1-0. The match was a good match that had lots of action and a few goal line decisions. The assessor was very happy with the performance.

So now we head back to Beijing and await for quarterfinal assignments.

USA in the Quarterfinals....

...and not just the WNT, USA will also have a team officials in the Quarter Finals representing! August 15th Kari, Veronica, Marlene and Dianne (of Guyana) will be the 3rd team for Brazil v Norway.

This is bound to be an exciting match. Brazil is on a hot streak, winning their group in the first round, in fact, scoring a hat trick yesterday versus Nigeria. Norway, as you may remember, is the team that beat the USA in the opening match 2-0.

Everything is on the line, as the winning team secures a spot in the semi-finals and the losing team returns home.

You'll all be with us in spirit as we work hard to be the best team on the field.

Kari, Marlene & Veronica

Daily Training—What We Do On Our “Days Off”

Many of you must be wondering, what exactly do we do when we are not working on matches. We actually have a tight schedule with many different things incorporated into our daily program. Every non-game day includes physical training. The physical training is scheduled is modified before and after game day to optimize our game fitness. Our fitness training alternates between workouts in the hotel gym and workouts on the field. All training sessions and games are done with a heart rate monitor with the data downloaded and available for our review. The concentration on the heart rate monitors has made us more conscious of the target rate instead of just going out and training as hard as we feel like that day.

Days that involve physical training in the gym are normally followed by a session of mental preparation. In the gym, we do cardio, weight training, and balancing (for injury prevention) exercises. This has also helped with teamwork and cooperation as we are sharing a small number of machines. These workout sessions can be quite a fun experience as many of the women can be quite comical. We will remember the fun times as much as the new exercises.

The mental preparation revolves around learning techniques for relaxation and visualization. There is a high degree of pressure on referees to perform on the matches. We also know that clips are selected from all the matches to be shown to our peers during debriefings and the actions and decisions are used for development purposes. Therefore, learning mental relaxationtechniques and ways to cope with mistakes on and off the field is very useful, as we know that learning to cope with mistakes and on and off the field is a vital tool to becoming a better referee. Initially, this type of mental preparation was a bit unexpected, but at the same time, we see the value in the training as how we deal with internal struggles positively can improve our performance. We feel very fortunate to have a well-rounded training program to help us improve in mind and in body.

Our outdoor physical training varies from day-to-day. Each session begins with dynamic stretching and movements and is followed by the physical training portion, and then followed by practical sessions. In one of our assistant referee oriented sessions, the physical training portion involved sprints from mid-field to the eighteen yard box, jogging to the goal line, side stepping back to the eighteen and sprinting back to midfield. This was followed by a walk across the field and a repetition on the other side of the field. Sprints on both sides of the field constituted one lap. We did 5 laps, rested for 3-4 minutes, and did 5 more. Wow! This was tough considering how hot and humid the weather was. This session was video taped and our fitness instructor took turns running the sprints with different pairs of people to encourage us to run even faster. Being competitive people, this definitely worked to push us. The cool thing was that we were able to run this as a pair because there were times each of us needed to talk the other through the workout to get the right pacing.

The practical sessions have been a really good way to improve the team work with referees and ARs. They have also been good at replicating situations on the field to improve the concentration and decision making of the referee team. We are really grateful that they have focused so much on the decisions made by the assistant referees which give us instant feedback that we cannot get any other way. We have been very pleased with these sessions, as we feel that these training tools are helping us to meet the expectations of a FIFA tournament. We hope to implement these drills at home so that others can also get the benefits of our training.

Finally, we have debriefings in combined group session with all the men and women officials after every game. These sessions can be a bit nerve-wracking as everyone is hoping that they are not shown doing something wrong. It has been inspiring though to see some of the more senior officials volunteering situations in their games that may not have gone the way they hoped so that everyone can learn from them. They’re courage and maturity have shown us some real leadership and given us a great example of behavior at a FIFA tournament.

Veronica & Marlene

Match Day 3

I would like to share with all of you the good news we received today. We will be officiating the third round game between Ivory Coast vs Australia on the 13Th of August in Tianjin. Thank you all for the kind words and encouragement through out our Olympic experience.

Thank you
Jair

Nearing the end of the first round

The final assignments are out for the first round women's matches today.

As you know team USA had Brazil v Germany on the first day of the tournament. We received positive feedback from our assessors and colleagues alike.

You probably figured out we didn’t get a match on the second day (sans post); a nice few days of recovery. And now for the final day of matches in the group stages Kari has been assigned the 4th official of China v Argentina. Marlene and Veronica will be enjoying a few more days of recovery.

Keep your fingers crossed for us for the next rounds of matches.

Go Team USA

Match day one

August 6, 2008
Today we depart for the city of Qinhuangdao, by train the 7 of us are taken to the train station and we are placed in an area and surrounded by security people that do not allow people to enter, then we board and ride the train for 2 hours to the city, with uniformed security people on the train with us and then we were met by more of the event staff for the venue. They take us by police escort to the hotel and we are greeted by the hotel staff, They have people there that present each of us with flowers and a ovation as we enter the hotel people are standing on the second floor. And then we are taken to our room and we enjoy dinner in the hotel.
Match day
We depart the hotel at 5:30 for a 10 minute trip. The bus has a police escort that radios ahead we are coming and they stop all traffic at any intersection to ensure we arrive without any problems. People are standing on the streets as we pass by watching us. The first game is going on as we enter so we head to the locker room and begin to prepare for the match. We begin to change and put on the belts for the communication device we have to help each other, put the device in the belts and the earpiece taped on our face and neck to keep it from moving around. Game went very good ended in a tie and we had one caution and one send off.It was very HOT and HUMID!!!!!!!

8-8-08
We travel back to Beijing in hopes of getting to the opening cermonies. As you have read before disappointment set in for our trio. We had to stay in the hotel and watch from the TV. FIFA did not have tickets for us and since Jair had to leave for ShangHai on 8-9-08 FIFA said he had to stay and We were not back when the bus left so we had to stay at the hotel as per directions from the bosses.
So for first match great game great experience great time.
Jair, Kermit