Long Day of Travel

Spent ALLLLLLL day Sunday traveling. Here is a pic of my team at Newark Airport just before we boarded the plane. The flight was long and uneventful except that I got to watch Grand Torino. Great movie. In fact I that I watched 3 Clint Eastwood movies on the plane. Hmmmm, I'd didn't realize before about the EL AL "Clint Eastwood Film Festival".

We arrived at Kfar Maccabiah, the sport center/hotel run by Maccabi. Great Facility in Ramat Gan which is a suburb of Tel Aviv. The girls soon realized with a "Wonderful Coach" they have when I told them they were free to spend a couple of hours hanging out at the pool that afternoon.

At 4:00 pm, we headed over the the Hakoach field around the corner from Kfar Maccabiah for an hour of light training. (Hakoach is the training field for one of the clubs here) We did a little fitness and technical training as a way of both getting our bodies moving after the long trip and to set a tone as to the level of expectation I have. I wanted the players to begin to start thinking about their game at a different level and pace they are used to. To be successful on the international level we need to play (and think) the game much quicker. I was very pleased at our work rate and willingness to push ourselves while we were quite fatigued from the travel.

After training, we had an orientation with the other teams here for Training Camp, the other soccer teams, Baseball, Basketball, Volleyball, Rowing are here as well.

It's now 9:00 pm and we are about to have a quick team meeting to review tomorrow's schedule and CRASH! I don't think anyone will have trouble sleeping at this point. Good first day!