TEAM CARDINAL's Holland Blog
July 14, 2006 | Field Hockey
June 10, 2006
Senior Jessica Javelet kept a journal of TEAM CARDINAL's experiences during their trip to Holland May 31 - June 6.
May 31st
I got into Schiphol at 1:00 pm and got on the train to Den Haag (The Hague) without the family, who came over early with me to check out the sites in England. This was my first time traveling alone and it was really scary because I don't speak a lick of Dutch. As my luck would have it, I got off at the wrong stop and finally found the right train. However, when I got into Den Haag Centraal taxis and I had to walk like 50 blocks to get to a taxi stop, which eventually took me to the hotel where the team was staying. Randomly, taxis in Holland are not beat up cars, they are Mercedes.
Utter met me at the front desk and told me that Janneke, our old teammate, surprised the team at the airport. Janneke later admitted that she had also been at the airport the day before because she saw on our itinerary that we left on May 30th and thought that we would arrive the same day. Way to represent Cardinal style, Janne! When I went up to the rooms, everyone on the team was on zombie mode or sleeping and they were definitely not appreciative of my energy.
After dinner, which consisted of chicken salad, chicken cordon bleu, and ice cream (YES!), we had practice from 6:30-8:30 at a local Dutch hockey club with a male Dutch coach, Erwin. I had no idea that there is such a hockey culture in Holland! Basically, Erwin was correcting us from the moment we stepped on the field. We did some basic, but very intense drills and by the end of practice you could see a noticeable difference with the speed and accuracy of our passes/hits/shots. We learned that Erwin could place a shot anywhere he wants with his eyes closed. Yes, he was amazing and had many interesting metaphors to describe our style of hockey. Let's review some:
• Don't carry the ball to the side like it is your boyfriend
• To do a backhand chip, don't hold your stick like you're flipping pancakes
• Don't shoot like you're riding a horse
• Backhand is for Losers! Aside from that, we also learned about receiving facing completely forward, quick shots, shot backswings, and directional fakes. Afterwards, we just came back to the hotel and chilled out in our rooms before going to bed.
June 1st
Well, I woke up this morning at 7 with Wasser, my roommate, staring at me because she had been up since 6. We went down to eat breakfast, which consisted of bread, meat, cheese, fruit, granola, yogurt, and chocolate sprinkles. Yes, chocolate sprinkles on bread is like a delicacy here. We had our first communication barrier with a waitress who wanted to see our room cards, but we thought she wanted to bring us water. After, we went back to the hockey club to practice and this time we got to use the real turf instead of the sand turf from the night before. We had practice in true cardinal fashion: Meiz and Missy ran into each other and practically got concussions, Buckwheat hit Beth in the knee, and Wasser nailed Maffitt with her stick on a popped up ball in the circle. However, despite all the injuries, no one was really hurt and it was a productive practice. Something I noticed today is that we have ridden our chartered bus a total of 5 times and each time it has been a different bus.
We took the bus to Den Haag Centraal and since it was raining, we decided not to rent bikes. From the looks on our faces, it was definitely the right decision. Instead, we took a trolley to the North Sea and had a few hours to shop, eat, and see the sites. It was so cold and windy and of course, JRo dragged us down to the Sea because she just had to touch the water. Britt wanted to buy this orange shirt, but the lady told her that all she had to do get it was buy these two small packages, which looked like gum or matches. However, they turned out to be orange rolling papers and the shirt was the Holland equivalent of Marlboro. Hey, it was in Dutch. How were we supposed to know?
We split up into groups and while many people went to traditional Dutch restaurants, my group decided to stay inside the box and went to a pizza shop. However, the guy behind the counter was the pizza equivalent of the soup nazi on Seinfeld. If you did not order correctly, he just went on to the next person. It took me like three times to order. On the way back to the hotel, our tour guide taught us how to properly pronounce the sound of "g", which is like coughing up a hairball. Wasser and I passed out when we got back and slept through our alarm, but by some miracle we were only 5 minutes late to dinner. Dinner was pasta with dutch apple pie as dessert. I could really get used to this dessert thing.
After dinner, we left for our game, but close to the field we encountered a road block. Actually, it was this huge parade with drums and the whole get up. So we had to get off the bus and walk in the parade with all of our stuff to get to the field.
The Alecto team we played was very skilled, but we gave them a great game. I think it is safe to say that we immediately learned that we need to have better off ball movement and stronger passes. We managed to keep ourselves intact during the game. However, with 3 minutes left to go, Andrea took a ball straight to the foot. We ended up losing 4-2, but we had many opportunities and even two strokes on which we didn't capitalize.
After the game, we went into the club house to eat tomato soup and bread with the other team. We also traded the team some shirts for their actual jerseys, which was very cool of them.
