Two Scrimmages and a Banquet

In our preparation for the final tournament of the season, the Asian Cup, we had two scrimmages this week. Both were successful. On Wednesday we scrimmaged the former men’s national team players. They had beat us pretty badly in the last two scrimmages. This time is was 7-3 at the half and 16-7 in the end. We did much better, and were simply out muscled a lot. Our offense has definitely improved and our defense is getting there.

Today, we faced off against the former women’s national team players. We narrowly defeated them 2-1 the last time we scrimmaged. We were without three players from our second line for the game, who are nursing injuries and getting ready for next week. However, we played very well in a 4-0 victory. We had great focus on defense and if it were not for a few cross-bars we might have won by a lot more. Our young players from the 4th line did well filling the spots on the second line. So, we will be prepared, with a couple practices next week, for Beijing. We face South Korea on Friday, March 24th at 4:30 (China Standard Time) to open the tournament.

After our scrimmage today, Mr. An came into my room around 10:00 am and gave me the standard ten minute warning before a banquet. So, we were off, and in some high powered company today. We had two tables at this banquet. Our table was headed by the Chief of Police for all of the Heilongjiang Province, Mr. Li, and the Chief of Police for all of Harbin. Mr. An, Tim, Coach Ji, Coach Liu and two other policeman (one a former basketball star) were also at the table. The other table had many of the former women’s national team players that we had played earlier. It was a fun time, but way too much drinking. It seemed to double due to the two tables. Luckily, we had nothing else to do this afternoon. Below you can see the crew from our table, the two police chiefs are right behind me:



Good night and Happy St. Patrick’s Day from Harbin!