Yes, 66 Pieces

While the flight to Lisbon was smooth, the U.S. team did arrive in Portugal without some important things, namely 66 pieces of luggage, almost all of it team training and game gear, and two players. Stephanie Cox and Natasha Kai experienced flight delays which caused them to miss the connection to Lisbon and they will join the team tomorrow. As far as the luggage, almost all the players got their personal bags, but only a few pieces of the team gear came through. We’re pretty sure someone in Newark took a look at the amount of gear the U.S. travels with, then looked at the relatively small plane the USA took to Lisbon (three seats on either side of the aisle…those seats are tight!), and said, “umm…not gonna happen.” We are hopeful that all the gear will all arrive tomorrow as it will be awfully difficult to hold practice with no soccer balls, no air pump to pump up the missing soccer balls, no training gear, no bibs, no cones, etc. But as they say, when given a lemon, make lemon-basted grilled chicken breast with garlic mashed potatoes (sorry, too much Food Network), or in other words, take a brisk team walk down to the beach. There is a monster hill leading down to the beach and coming back up that slope is definitely a workout.