Work To Do

Here is the bottom line – we are close. We are definitely one of the best teams in the world. Now we have to climb that last mountain to get to the top. We lost to Croatia last night 8 – 6. It is always disappointing to lose and once again we had our chances to win this game. Yeah at the end you could say that we had some terrible calls and that was the difference but the bottom line is that we did not get the job done when it counted. We had some critical 6 on 5 opportunities and we wasted them. In the last two games, we lost the 4th quarter and basically it came down to one stat. We missed on the most important 6 on 5’s while our opponents made theirs.

We end up taking 4th place in this world tournament. Not bad but a little disappointing after we started out so well. While it is nice to be in that top tier if we want to climb to the top we will have to work hard. There are parts of our game that we need to get much better at in order to become the best team. We need to continue to build each of our player’s individual skills while we strengthen the team concept. We have a core group of players that understand what it takes and are willing to go to work to make this happen. I believe that in the next year or two we will emerge as the world’s best.

I am honored to be a part of this team. They are a special group of young men. As we close another chapter and wind down another year together I want to thank all of you for your support and encouragement. Thank you for being a part of our journey. Stay tuned because there are some good chapters ahead. There is much work to do.

See you at the pool.

Coach