Hope Flips

Before the U.S. players got off the bus when arriving at the team hotel for the first time today, they were told, “lunch is right now, team walk at 4 p.m., everyone bring a quarter.” Bring a quarter? It turned out that even a team walk can be turned into some sort of competition by U.S. head coach Pia Sundhage (who arrived at the hotel about 30 minutes after the team with Sports Science/Fitness Coach Helena Andersson, after the duo took a much shorter flight from Sweden). After the team walked on the sand and in the ocean for a few minutes, they proceeded up to the path overlooking the beach and Sundhage ran a game that was simple in execution, but more difficult to describe. It basically consisted of flipping a quarter, and trying to land it past one mark, but not over another. After several rounds of elimination, that championship came down to Cat Whitehill vs. Hope Solo, two out of three tosses. After two pin-point flips from Solo (she is allowed to use her hands during the games after all), the U.S. ‘keeper took home just over $7 of her teammates hard earned coins! (A few of the staff lost their quarters as well). Didn't Solo also win all those cookies during the team's Super Bowl pool? Solo volunteered to use her spoils to buy some of the infamous crepes and ice cream that the team always partakes in while in the Algarve.