Furman Women's Soccer Europe Diary

Presented By Melissa Turner

ENTRY #2

One word for the day: STRETCH.

We all got up and had breakfast by 9am (we finally got to sleep in!). As we loaded the bus, Brain practiced his golf swing while Andrew Burr got in a quick stretch. Our first game was at 1:15pm. We warmed up and stretched before every game. Then, after every game, we cooled down and stretched again. Counting four 40-minute games, we stretched eight times total. The games were very close together. Lindsey Facciolo felt like "as soon as we cooled down, it was time to warm up again--with just enough time to have a quick snack."

The European women were quite different. Michelle Muro claimed she waw a few women smoking cigarettes at halftime. The games were fairly physical. In our third game, Facciolo came close to a brawl, but she decided against it since she saw how big the woman's teammates were.

We won two games and tied one in our bracket. Vanderbilt won their bracket in a shootout so we had a coin toss to see who would be in the final because we could not play Vanderbilt until September 6th. Tails (Furman) won. Some of us started to get dead legs by the final game. We were down 1-0 with ten minutes left but made a glorious comback to win 2-1. Our prizes for winning the Stein Cup were a trophy and two aprico pies.

Dinner was the best yet with an athlete's favorite dish: pasta.

Highlights for the day were Emily Turgeon telling Katie Carson to take her pants off because ants were crawling up them and the overload of bread at all meals.

Game Results:

Game 1 (pool play): Furman 2, Standard Luik (Belgium) 0

• FU goals: Katie Carson (off Kelly Shedd corner kick)
• FU goals: Cristina Echavarry

Game 2 (pool play): Furman 0, Stedeco (Holland) 0

Game 3 (pool play): Furman 2, R.K.T.S.V (Holland) 1

• FU goals: Katie Carson (header off assists from Turner, Turgeon)
• FU goals: Emily Turgeon (Turner assist)

Game 4 (final): Furman 2, O.D.C. Boxtel (Holland) 1

• FU goals: Melissa Turner (Echavarry assist)
• FU goals: Kaye Brownlee (unassisted)
• note: Turner tied the score at 1-1 with ten minutes to play and Brownlee's game winner was scored with two minutes remaining in the championship match.

Comment from head coach Brian Lee: "The tournament gave us some great competition and all is well so far."