Our Adventure in Kazakhstan 6/16/12

Our journey began with a flight out of Orange County - John Wayne Airport at 8:00 am. This meant that we had to jump in a shuttle at 4:45 am in Thousand Oaks to make the flight. Wow - talk about making a long day even longer. Our flight path took us to Houston with a two hour layover and then to London with another two hour layover and finally into Almaty, Kazakhstan. It was a super long day to say the least. All in all, it was about 22 hours in the air - sitting in coach seats. To make matters worse, many of our guys had middle seats for a least one leg. Needless to say, we all felt pretty beat up when we arrived. After arriving around 10:30 pm, we had a late dinner and went right to bed. The hotel was out in the middle of nowhere and it was eerie quiet. We woke up to a beautiful setting. The hotel is very isolated - lots of trees around and some pretty good snow capped mountains off in the distance. What was a bit strange to me is that even in the morning it was quiet. As I opened my window and stared outside, I was perplexed by the absence of birds. All these trees but no birds? Something seemed amiss. Actually, I did not see any birds for the first two days we were here and since I have seen only a few. Weird to say the least... Water polo wise - we had two days of training before the tournament began. On Tuesday (we arrived late Saturday night) we played the host country in the final game of the night. I good crowd showed up to cheer on the home crowd. On our first possession of the game we had two of our players kicked out and then when Kazakhstan did not score on their power play they were awarded a penalty throw on the rebound. It was obvious from the beginning that the officials were going to make it difficult on us. After struggling to a tie in the first quarter (4-4) we began to pull away. We were up 8 - 5 at the half and 10 -5 at the end of three quarters. Kazakhstan made a bit of a run and the game finished with us on top 11 - 8. No time to rest or celebrate in this tournament as we will play a game a day for six days straight. Next up was China. This was more of a battle then it needed to be. The Chinese were tough and played a solid game on defense but our shooting was definitely off. We were up 3 - 1 at the half and went on to win 6 - 4. The match featured our team captain, Tony Azevedo playing against his father, Ricardo who is now the head coach for the Chinese national team. Tony had one goal in the game. In the final preliminary game, we faced off with Italy, who is currently ranked # 1 in the world. This was an interesting game in which each team took turns going on surges. We took an early lead and at the end of the first period we were up 3-1. Then it was Italy’s turn as they scored four straight to lead 5 - 3 at the half. The third quarter was all USA as we battled back and tied the score 5 - 5 at the end of three. Unfortunately, it was Italy that had the final push and they ended up winning 7 - 5. We gave up four “soft” goals in this game. We beat them in every aspect of the game except for the scoreboard. John Mann led the scoring for us with two goals. After the loss to Italy we crossed over in the quarter-final game against Australia the following day. We played with passion for three quarters taking a commanding 5 - 1 lead and dominating them. We seemed to tire a bit at the end and let them back into the game but won a one sided 7 - 5 game. Peter Varellas scored three nice goals for us to lead our attack. Every aspect of our game was good except for our 6 on 5 which was mediocre. The win put us in the semi-finals against Croatia. Once again, we started strong and then faltered a bit and let Croatia back into the game. By the beginning of the second half, the game was being played in a thunder and lighting storm. Rain was coming down hard throughout the second half which made things interesting and really wet for the coaches. Croatia ended up on the winning side of an 11 - 10 game. Once again, we did a lot of things very well but made too many small mistakes that cost us a few key goals. Croatia ended up getting three penalty shots which is a bit unheard of in a single game. Anyway, we definitely had our chances to win the game. We have no one to blame but ourselves. We can’t give up that many goals against anyone. Our game is defense and we need to clamp down if we are to come out of here tomorrow with a win. We will play Italy (they lost to Spain today) in the third/fourth place game tomorrow. Ok - back to the interesting facts about this place. There have been impressive storms almost every day in the afternoon. In fact, as I write this we are being bombarded with rain, thunder and lightening. Other than that it is a bit too quiet here. As one of our players said, I almost expect to see Jack Nicholson walk out of my closet at night? The food has been OK at best. Lots of mystery meats... Just as an example - tonight Ryan Bailey ate french fries for dinner (he could not do the meat). As for the lack of birds - I am not sure what to say. There are not many small animals either... regardless, it has been quiet and I have definitely been sleeping well. We will work hard for a win tomorrow and then it is on to Montenegro for five days of training before heading back for our final preparation. See you at the pool. Coach