Rec’ing On…Beijing Olympics – Part 13

It was a mixed bag for the USA women’s teams in a day filled with finals.  Softball, Soccer, and Water Polo plus a semi-final in Basketball with a major rival.

The major success was with the U.S. women’s soccer team winning a somewhat unexpected gold medal against arguably the best team in the world, Brazil. Through most of the second half, it looked like Brazil would be the victors given that the U.S. spent most of the time playing defense. In hindsight, it might have been a calculated risk designed to fatigue the very dangerous Brazilian squad. In the end, a little bit of luck and a lot of reputation saw the Americans score the game’s lone goal.

I’m throwing props to U.S. goalkeeper Hope Solo.  She had a very critical save and was generally solid in the goal. While I’ve been a fan of hers for a while, I became a major fan at the last Women’s World Cup when Hope said that she shouldn’t have been replaced in goal with Briana Scurry…that if she’d been in goal, the U.S. would have won. Though knowing full well there would be consequences for a statement like that, she said what I had been thinking. She has courage and conviction.  More—she now also has vindication.

Switching sports to softball, I have to start with major thumbs up to Japan’s pitcher Yukiko Ueno, who pitched not only against the USA the previous day in a loss, but had to pitch another game against Australia just five hours later. So, three games, 28 innings, over 400 pitches…she deserved the win.  As U.S. starter Cat Osterman said, “She just beat us…I’m not hanging my head too much about it.”

In fact, this game might be the lost battle that allows you to win the war. A lot has been said and written about the struggle of getting softball back into the Olympics after the 2012 games. One of the thoughts has been that some with an official voice felt the USA was too dominant. Perhaps so, but I think that showing that they aren’t invincible will go a long way to seeing the sport find a long term home at the Olympics starting with the 2016 games.

At least Japan was considered a viable threat on the diamond, but in Water Polo, the Netherlands were thought to be considerable underdogs. The got a quick 4-0 lead in the first quarter, and while the Americans were able to tie, they were never able to edge ahead. So, as is typical with the USA team, they lost the gold (again) by one goal in the waning moments of a game.

Fortunately the USA team learned from their basketball loss at the World Championships, and wouldn’t yield to the pesky Russian team that gave the US a better contested match than any they’ve yet faced in these Olympics. The American’s failings in the first half may have been from simply being too excited about their opponent. Hopefully they will have gotten it out of their system as Australia looms ahead. This is the match just about everyone except the Russians were waiting for: the same gold medal match-up as in the past two Olympics…AUS vs USA. This has the makings of one heck of a basketball game. Two evenly matched and experienced teams who know each other all too well. I can’t hardly wait.