Kate and Christie on CNN

When the USA was in Birmingham, Ala., a few weeks ago, CNN cameras came out to follow the USA's Soccer Moms, Kate Markgraf and Christie Rampone, for a day. They even went to the zoo, where Keegan Markgraf hand-fed a giraffe. Man, it's fun to be a kid sometimes. Click below to see the excellent CNN Mother's Day piece that ran last Sunday.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/sports/2008/05/11/smith.us.soccer.moms.cnn

Happy Mother's Day from the WNT

We all know that the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "Soccer Mom" but the latest all_access video brings it to another level. While in Washington, D.C., the team took time out after a training to thank their moms for, among other things, all that time driving them to practices and tournaments and sitting in the lawn chairs on the sidelines, as well as all the love and support over the years. So, here is a special Mother's Day Tribute from the WNT.

Technically Difficult

We would like to apologize for the problems with MatchACCESS last night during the Canada game. Best laid plans can come unravelled and we had some major difficulty with the Internet connection for the web stream. We were going to show you the match on ussoccer.com today, but once again, some unforeseen circumstances reared their ugly head in addition to the gremlins invading our technology. We will get some highlights of the game up on the site ASAP as there were some fantastic goals last night (in fact, all six were pretty darn good) and they do deserve to be seen. Thank you for your patience.

Yesterday and TODAY

Coming off the rousing 6-0 victory over Canada last night at RFK Stadium, four U.S. players are scheduled for a brief appearance on the NBC Today Show in New York on Monday morning. Jersey girls Heather O'Reilly, Carli Lloyd and Tobin Heath, along with Rochester, N.Y.'s Abby Wambach should be on live with the Today Show crew at around 8:30 a.m. ET. The weather is forecast to be, in meteorological terms, "yucky" so we're not sure how that will impact the appearance, but after the USA's match in Cary, N.C. n April 27 against Australia that was played in a virtual monsoon, a little rain and wind won't bother these players.

Go Time

The USA's pre-game practice today was quite a wet one as a steady rain fell during the entire hour. The team trained on turf at Georgetown, so the rain was hardly noticed, although the players were drenched when getting back onto the bus. It is supposed to rain a little bit tomorrow morning, but it should be cleared up by game time, which is a good thing as we don't want anything to interrupt the ussoccer.com MatchACCESS web stream. Would rain impact a live webcast? Probably not, but we don't know how that stuff works, so better safe than sorry. Fans can watch the game and/or follow on ussoccer.com's MatchTracker. The team has been training hard this week so suffice it to say, the players are excited to get on the field for an actual game after kicking each other all week. The U.S. team will go on a week break after this game before re-grouping in Los Angeles for a two-week training camp. FYI: The USA's opening match in the Olympics is 79 days away.

RFK Preview/Rewind

The U.S. team took in the first 45 minutes of the D.C. United-Chicago Fire game tonight at RFK Stadium. The players got to walk on (well, next to) the field before the game and were impressed with the plushness of the surface, which surely made everyone even more excited to play on Saturday night. Interesting note about RFK Stadium. Back in 1995, RFK hosted the first-ever domestic WNT match that was played in a big stadium. It was actually the final game of that year at the Nike U.S. Women's Cup, which came just after the USA returned from the third-place finish at 1995 FIFA Women's World Cup in Sweden. The USA beat Norway that day (the same team that had knocked them out of the WWC and gone on to take the title), winning 2-1, on goals from Mia Hamm and player named Tammy Pearman, who came off the bench in her first-ever cap to score the winning goal, which turned out to be the only goal of her career. She would play in just eight more games for the USA spanning 230 minutes. That game was watched by 7,083 fans, which was at the time the largest crowd ever to watch the U.S. women in the United States. Just under a year later, 76,489 would watch the Olympic gold medal game in Athens, Ga...thus introducing the WNT to America and the world.

Rain, Of Course

The U.S. WNT has encountered rain at every stop on this three-game domestic tour and this morning there was a little spritzing during training, but nothing major. Tonight, the skies opened, thunder roared and lightning struck! Ok, so we heard a bit of thunder and it rained a bit harder. The rain is supposed to last through tomorrow morning and afternoon (and maybe evening), which should make the pre-game practice a bit wet, but hopefully it will clear up on game day. In Cary, N.C. for the first game against Australia, of course it rained and stormed so hard that the game was delayed for about an hour. In Birmingham, Ala., it rained on the morning of game day, but cleared up quickly and the weather was glorious for the match. The pitch at RFK is in fantastic condition, so it surely can absorb some rain, but it would be nice for the fans to have a clear day on Saturday in what will be the USA's last visit to the Eastern part of the United States before the 2008 Olympics.