Sweden climbs FIFA world ranking
1....2.....3....SWE....SWE....SWEDEN!!!!!
That was our battle cry before every game as we went into the BYU International Services world cup last night at the RB Turf fields. This World Cup was pretty awesome, 22 teams all representing different countries, a DJ on the field playing international music the whole time and foreign students all over the place. In our group we had Argentina, Nepal, Germany, and Chile. (you don't have to be from the country to play as them--about the only connection we had to Sweden was we had a few blonde haired people and my ancestors are from there haha.)
The first game was against Argentina. They were by far the easiest competition we had. Unfortunately before the game started Dallin sprained his ankle/potentially broke his toe climbing a fence trying to get a ball that went over..poor guy. The one thing we were shocked about was the fact that almost no other teams had girls on it. When they told me it was Co-ed I went and got like half a team of girls because I thought that everyone else had them. When we saw a bunch of quick 21-23 year old guys I guess we were pretty intimidated. Anyways. Argentina. They had the most girls of anyone we played against which was two, but we had two girls on the field at all times which was pretty impressive. I was very happy with how well they played! They did Sweden proud. Good job Emily Anderson, Emily Davis, Michaela Bateman, and Rachel Schnappi! I got some perfect through balls and some nice hits and scored 8 goals in our first game. We won 8-2 and I was pretty excited because I have never scored a double hat trick in any game and plus two goals on top of that.
The next game was against Nepal and all of them were quick guys that were actually from there. They played so rough and weren't afraid to shove you and pull your jersey no matter what gender you were! They opened the scoring and I scored like 2 minutes later. I scored again and we went up and then with 4 minutes to go they scored and their incredible fan section of about 30 Nepal people went absolutely crazy on the sidelines. We tied 2-2 but it was a very competitive and impressive game.
Finally, we played Chile-another team with no girls and guys who play soccer every day with each other (one of the people putting on the cup kept telling us we were really good because he played with them every day). By this time I was cramping up in my left calf and according to one of my friends, we "should have had a coach there to tell us to do more warm-ups!" Well about 10 minutes in I kicked the ball at the exact same time as someone else at full force and pretty much destroyed my ankle. Then Brayden, our goalie somehow dislocated his shoulder getting to a ball on the ground and he couldn't move until the paramedics came with an ambulance and a fire-truck to take him to the hospital. He came over when he got back and explained that they put him to sleep and popped his shoulder back into place in the hospital and he is fine, what a trooper! Brayden played incredible goalie all games, making some super impressive saves that should have easily been goals. Whats more impressive is that he hasn't played soccer in years! I played the rest of the game on my bum ankle because we only had 7 minutes left (after an hour delay) and they scored two more times. We were pretty ready to be done at that point though :)
Overall we played with a lot of heart throughout the competition. If we accumulated enough points with a win (3 points) and a draw (1 point) and a pretty good goal difference hopefully we can sneak through to the next round in two weeks. Maybe by then we will be healed up and ready to face the next round of competition. I'll notify you how it goes!!!
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