Rewind (to like a week ago)

I started this blog a week and a half ago Saturday and Jen finished it on Sunday but we are just now posting it. I am currently writing one that is a little more current and hope to post soon.

Welcome back the life and times of Jen and Jordan. It is Saturday afternoon, I’m in the back of a Ford Van on the way to Oberkirch to hopefully garner another 2 points. I am currently scarfing a sandwich with butter and ham and pickles and it is pretty darn good. We were able to hook my IPOD up to the radio so I am introducing some of my teammates to a wide variety of “underground” hip-hop (they only know very popular artists and songs so just about everything I have is considered underground) and some old-school Metallica and Alice in Chains. Somewhat entertaining. Jen is on her way to a game in Freiburg. We are both in good health and excited at another chance to play. Game day is the most exciting day for us every week. It is what we live for and the reason we are here.

Jen leaves tomorrow morning for Poland. She is super excited. Starting today she will be either playing a game or practicing twice a day for the next 2 weeks. It is a very good opportunity for her to build confidence and showcase to the U.S coach her improvement since moving to Germany. She is very excited about representing the U.S.A. again and meeting and playing with the new, young faces of women’s team handball in the U.S.

Jen and I have had a long but rather uneventful week.

24 hours later…

Hello all this is Jen now. I have stolen the computer and I am currently waiting in the airport in Zurich, Switzerland staring at the Swiss Alps, which are absolutely beautiful, by the way. I am on my way to Poland to play with the Jr. National Team. Our roomie has a computer and Jordan can use the phone at my teammates house, so I didn’t feel super bad about taking the computer.

Anyways, we both won yesterday! Jordan’s team won by 1 and he contributed 6 goals! Woohoo! So jealous and so proud! It sounds like he is finding the holes playing circle and finding that connection you need with your teammates. My team won by 4, which is great! Our staff might all have had heart attacks if we did not win. It was also the first time my team had beat Freiburg in their gym. It is very different playing by this point system with no tournament at the end of the season. I struggled yet again on offense but my defense was fabulous and my defense is what earned me a place on the court the last ten minutes of the game rather then on the bench so I was happy with that.

Today Jordan has to coach four 20 minutes children games without me. On top of that the games are away so he awkwardly has to ride with some parents. So glad I don’t’ have to do that. On the other hand the president of Grenzach’s sport club is very impressed with Jordan. His kids play for us and so he is always at the games. He made a point of coming to me and saying how the parents are so happy with Jordan and myself as coaches. So brownie points for us. After the games he is heading to Weil to have a Sunday lunch/dinner with some teammates and their parents. One of the parents is from England and so the whole family speaks English, which is always a plus. Although our German is improving daily there are still so many things that get lost in translation. Plus many things do not translate and what does translate is not always what you want to say. Regardless I am jealous to be missing another get together with his teammates. Due to my training schedule I really have not had the time to get to know a lot of his teammates.

This past week as Jordan said was pretty uneventful. We had school everyday as usual. We only got to lift once this week because we were busy finishing up final touches on a scholarship through the USOC, we find out in January if we get picked. It is a financial scholarship that helps active United States National Team Pool Members. Jordan and I are both in the National Team pools for Team Handball and so are eligible. We had to send in an essay, 2 letters of recommendation, and any articles that we found pertinent to our situation. I think we made ourselves look as desperate as we could for money, which we didn’t find too difficult to do. On Monday we enjoyed a day (Free) at the Weil Am Rein Spa, thanks to Jordan’s team who gave us two free passes. It seems that every other town has something of this sort. It has the usual massage and facial option but it also has a number of pools, saunas (all doing different things like light therapy or different aromas), and whirlpools. This one even had a fake beach set up and it had the tanning booth lights in the open (I am not joking). It also had a wave pool inside although Jordan said the waves weren’t big enough but I tried to explain it was more for people 5 ft and under. It also had three HUGE slides. Two of them went out of the building and back in and one of those was open on the outside. I refused to be that cold going down the slide. Regardless, Jordan got inline with the kids and went down a numerous amount of times. He made sure to try out every pool and every slide. It was a nice relaxing day! Then we had our normal training in the evening. OK, so I guess we had a busy week.

This upcoming week hopefully will be uneventful for Jordan. He has to go to school, lift a few days and train a few days. I wrote out any and all instructions he would need ☺ For myself, the upcoming week will be very interesting. As we have mentioned before I am heading to Poland to play for the Jr. National Team. The tournament gave the US team special permission to bring a few players over the age of 21 because we do not have enough athletes’ young enough yet to fill a Jr. Team roster. Not only am I the oldest one going at 25, but some of my teammates are 15 and I think one is 14. LIKE WHOA! Just call me Grandma. The girls aren’t even old enough to drink in Europe and that’s young. Although I am very excited to instill my wisdom of the sport on these young athletes I am nervous about the competition and the experience of the other players. We will be playing the U19 European Champions and two other Jr. national teams from Poland and Check Republic. Regardless, it will be another step forward for Team USA and another opportunity for me to wear the red, white, and blue. I also promise that I have all intentions of going out and kicking some foreign butt!

I guess that is all for now. I will try to update how the week is going but our results of our friendly match and the tournament at the end of the school should be on www.usateamhandball.org. Since it is all national teams in the tournament there is a possibility it will be streamed on the web so I will get details about that and let you know!

Lots of Love,

Jennifer Ryan