As Al said, most tournaments are over by now.  Our team is holding up ok, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t aches and pains.  Gotta earn it one way or another.

The big game with Australia turned out to be pretty tough indeed.  Strong team.  We had some trouble generating turns and scoring, but we did pull it off, which was important because the O wasn’t perfect.  I had a miscommunication turn with Coop, which just isn’t supposed to happen because of how much we play together, but it didn’t cost us in the end this time, so we’ll put it together before we’re done.

For those who don’t know about Worlds, here’s a digression into one of the things that makes this tournament what it is.  At the end of every game, the teams form a circle together, say some nice things to each other (they even mean them, it seems), and exchange gifts.  The gifts may be token in monetary value, but it’s a nice tradition that reinforces the positive interaction between teams.  The other teams usually have someone who can speak English.  We were able to speak some French and some German.  We have at least one Spanish-speaking teammate, so we’ll be ok with Venezuela, but I have no idea how we’ll be able to speak to the Great Britain team we play first tomorrow.

From the Aussies, the gifts included a snake (plastic), some Vegemite (um, cultural?), and a bottle of some form of adult refreshment (pulled out of the bag by our eldest player).  In addition, Isabel, one of the team’s children, got a miniature stuffed wombat.  We have been sharing some Team USA schwag, which may not be cultural, but perhaps neither are we.

We did get to hang in the beer garden and watch the USA Open team against Australia.  Open, fast game played by both teams.  And for the first 10 points or so, they both played it to perfect – no turnovers at all.  The first turnover quickly begat the second, but overall it was a hard-fought game in which the US pulled away inch by inch, finishing with a relatively comfortable 17-11 (?) victory, just barely beating the 5-point spread assigned to the game by one of our players.

A couple of our teams hit their first snags today, with the US Women going down by one point to Japan.  The US Mixed team, after being down 10-2, fought back to 12-10 or so.  Japan scored a couple to build the cushion back and finished it out.

A few more pictures in the flickr set, though I’m still not shooting that much.
And on that note, hopefully the laundry is done and I can get some sleep.  We have our earliest game yet at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, and it’s at the farthest fields – 4km away.  Closing off with another team picture – this time us with the Aussies.  ‘Night all.