Happy Father’s Day to my dad Vans LeBlanc and all other dad’s out there!!

Ok, so camp is over. We had our two final sessions today. This morning was quite amusing as the coaching staff joined Mel Booth and our young fellow GK Erin McNulty in the running of the beep test. (Mel got in yesterday).

It proved to be an easy task to beat the coaching staff for Mel, but to our great surprise, Dave our trainer held on the longest getting to one of the highest levels, competing with the same numbers as some of our fittest players.

The rest of the coaching staff…well, I won’t embarrass but they definitely were not up to par for the ‘international level’. If anything, I’d have to wonder if those results were for any level…ok, maybe Charlie’s level but since she wasn’t on this trip with us to prove me wrong, I’d say maybe, but just maybe, they’d have little Charlie beat on this one…

Anyway, we did the 3 grid game which is a team favorite. I was on the old team, and though a close competition, we came in second behind the middle aged ones. We had the opportunity to win the game in the end, but Ian had a couple questionable calls which allowed the middle aged gals the last opportunity, and they won. Following that, we did some fitness and were back off to the hotel to rest for our second session. Read the rest of this entry »

After a hard week of fitness training, we had the morning off today.

Wake-up call was at 10:15 allowing for a sweet sleep-in! The rest of the morning was filled with meals, watching World Cup games, a pre-game meeting, and individual preparations for the game.

In the evening we played an intense, fast paced game against a U-17 Boys team. KK and I shared the pipes allowing no goals to get past us. KK played the second half making two awesome flying saves keeping the ball out of the top corners of the net. Read the rest of this entry »

After having a much needed morning off we played a boys team this evening. The game started off well given the fact that I had managed to get a medium uniform instead of a large.

None of the eight year olds in the crowd would lend me their shirts, but Rhian agreed to trade her medium #16 for my usual #8. This also meant that Amy Walsh, unable to resist any opportunity to come up with new nicknames, decided to call me ‘double ocho’ for the game.

The game itself was pretty evenly matched. As expected, the boys were fast and energetic. They had four goal chances in the first half and thanks to some great finishing on their part they scored three.

In the second half there were a few changes and Kara came in on forward. It was a good change as she scored a few minutes after she came on, managing to get past their wall GK (lol) off of a great through ball by Melissa. Our defense played great in the second half and didn’t give up many chances. Read the rest of this entry »

Dragon Boat Flashback:

Okay, ladies and gents, welcome to the un-cut, un-censored version of the Canadian Soccer team’s venture onto the ocean in a 20 man (or rather, woman) dragon boat.

After a heartfelt send-off from Nanaimo’s city councillor, we strapped on some life-jackets and got ready to listen to instructions from our dragon-boating experts, Andrea and Nora. Truth be told, we were delayed somewhat while we looked for an extra-small life-jacket for D, but the problem was solved when a local eight year old offered the use of his for a nominal fee.

In order to defend some of our pre-boat antics, (as documented by KK’s pics), we have to tell you that we’d suffered through a day of fitness testing and were understandably giddy and tired. We gave our instructors a bit of a hard time, consistently referring to the activity as “rowing” instead of “paddling”, eliciting the ire of Nora in particular. A few silly comments and a couple of missteps into the boat later, we were off. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello All,

Well first off, HAPPY BIRHTDAY DADDY!!!!! LOVE YOU!!

I must also say hello to my fellow teammates who are unable to join us on this wonderful trip (shoutouts to Izzy, Katie and Amy A). Well wonderful because the night with a fun event, but the day was all business filled with my favorite thing in the world, FITNESS!!!!

This morning we had the full group here. The Vancouver Whitecaps players joined us around midnight as they had a game over in Vancouver last night. Rhian and D joined us around midday as they had to play the best team in the world (NJ WILDCATS, which ended in a tie with Rhi scoring both goals) last night out in Ottawa.

The rest of us arrived mid-afternoon yesterday into Nanaimo. I had a great flight run, I left my house at 5am for my flight into Vancouver where I was fortunate enough to wait 4 hours for my flight to Nanaimo. I must add in the flight from Vancouver to Nanaimo is 25 minutes but no complaints as I was lucky enough to sit down just in time to watch Argentina play the Ivory Coast.

Any game I get to see of the World Cup is a great experience for me. I truly enjoy watching the teams line up and see the passion in each player’s eyes as they play the national anthem. The great part is that sitting next to me was a guy, about my age or a bit younger, was on his way to Germany for a game, which is paid $1200 for two tickets. He got it off EBAY…hope it works out because he was really excited about it. (Pics enclosed). Read the rest of this entry »