Leader of the Pack

With the U.S. team having spent four months in Los Angeles at The Home Depot Center during Residency Training Camp in 2007 (and five months in 2006), the players have made many new friends in Southern California. That means plenty of requests for tickets for the Finland match and certainly some great individual cheering sections for the U.S. players. Defender Cat Whitehill, who lived just over the hill on the edge of the San Fernando Valley, will definitely have about 15 folks “woofing” it up for her at the match, all friends and friends of friends she met at a local dog park where she would take her Rottweiler-Shepherd mix, Izzy. Now Izzy won’t be at the game (she’s back in North Carolina where Whitehill’s husband is beginning medical school at UNC), but many of Izzy’s friends will be there, well, at least the owners of Izzy’s friends. If it weren’t for the “No Dogs Allowed” policy at The HDC, we might have seen an Australian Shepherd, a German Shepherd, a Black Labrador-Great Dane mix, a Chihuahua mix and a Malamute trotting through the gates, but instead only their owners will be coming. A special shout-out goes out to Kelly’s Pet Care for helping look after Izzy when Whitehill was out of town, which was a lot. Anyway, if you’re at the game, look for a group of people with I LOVE DOGS key chains who will be barking, we mean cheering, for Cat. Hmmm…ironic, isn’t it?