Monday, December 11, 2006

Day 8: Practice and "Surprise Night"

This morning was the last practice of the tour for the WNT players, who were ready to get back on the court following a nice day-off in Stockholm and trip to the European Championships. After eating breakfast in the cottages, the players and coaches headed over to the gym to meet-up with newly-appointed goalie coach Niclas Gonzales, who travelled from Udevalla with the president and head coach of the Swedish Division 1 club.

With a game against the Swedish National Youth Team only a day away, the players focused on their game preparation so they could come out strong from the beginning. Practice ended with an intense scrimmage and then the players packed it in for lunch.

The afternoon was left free for players to go into downtown Vasteras to do some more shopping, or just take some time to rest and relax.

At 5pm, the team gathered together to meet with Goran and some players from the Vasteras club to kick-off the "surprise evening" that they had planned for the WNT. Several cars took the players and coaches to an undisclosed location to enjoy a nice dinner before the evening's festivities took place.

After dinner, the WNT players were broken-up into teams, and the rules of the game were explained. Each team had an electronic key that would open the door to various "cells"- each cell contained a challenge and if completed correctly, would award the team with a certain number of points. The team with the most points at the end of the night would win.

The fun part of the game was figuring out what the challenge in each "cell" was, and how to win. There were no instructions, so the game required a bit of trial and error to figure out what was supposed to be done to get the points. Some of the challenges required physical proweress such as climbing walls and crawling through tunnels, while others required more technical and tactical skills. All of them required teamwork, though, and no less than three people were needed to successfully complete the tasks.

At the end of the night, everyone had a great time (and many had worked-up a sweat from all of the physical work!) and the WNT returned home to get a good night of sleep ahead of their last day in Sweden.

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