Sparks Game

Last night we were invited to the LA Sparks (WNBA) game to be honored at halftime. 6 of us were able to come and we made a GREAT night of it. The fans were awesome....they were so stoked that we had shown up with our matching jackets AND medals. When Sparky escorted us out onto the court, the fans started chanting U-S-A so loudly...It was like we were playing a game in the arena! Afterward, people were giving us high fives and taking pics with us all over the place. Some had never actually seen water polo, but were so in awe of the Olympics that they couldn't help talking to us to learn more about what we do.

Just lots of athletes and fans who LOVE sports and competition! It was a very very very cool experience and I'm so happy I was able to go. Not to mention that the game was extremely fun!

Next order of business, heading home to see my friends and family who woke up at odd hours to watch our games and created so much excitement for us and the Olympics!

Oprah Show

The Olympic show taping will be the Season Premier airing on

Monday 09-08-08

On the one month anniversary of the Opening Ceremonies

The Olympic Village

My BNU credential....rather than athlete, it had OLYMPIAN written on it, which was VERY exciting!












We had lots and lots of bags.....











My Roomie, Petie in our blank room....








Look, wind & solar power!




















Surfing on the dangerously spaced rocks across the pond on the way to FOOD!




















PR!






This is not even a 1/4 of the Dining Hall.

Pics from Processing.........

More to come......

Home Finally

After a long travel day, we finally made it back to Seal Beach! Neighbor Erik came to pick us up and even had a DELICIOUS carrot cake waiting for us with Neighbor Paul. It felt so good to walk into our little apartment, that smelled like the beach (ish) and felt so comfortable. I went to bed around 1 and woke up at 6 wooooooo! Yay, I love coming home from weird time zones....I don't have anything that I have to do, so I guess it doesn't matter.

So I know you're all curious what happens post-competition. Athletes go crazy! After years of anticipation and preparation, we all needed to decompress. There was excitement at the beginning to start competing and a different excitement at the end to meet other athletes, go to different venues, and celebrate with your team.

The three days we had to be in Beijing after the final were an important part of the Olympics for me. I loved being able to chill and take in everything from the previous weeks. Of course the fun continued at night... The USA house was the meeting place with free drinks and different medalists celebrating every night. From there we walked to the bar street...right at Hooters, to get to Shooters....with those directions we somehow found our way. There were lots of bars, dancing at the China Doll and people from all over the world gathering in the streets meeting each other and making the world just that much smaller. As much time as we spent wandering throughout Beijing (day and night), I still am confused by that humongous city.

Oh and some of you fans may be interested to know that some of my teammates and I became VIP (not that we aren't already, the Chinese just didn't know) because we were chillin with Ronaldinho and teammates. Just a few of the cool people we met in China throughout the trip!

Coming soon:
*LOOK OUT FOR PICS THAT I COULDN'T POST DURING.....The Olympics revealed!
*Oprah brings us to the show
*Going to the White House

Gold is great, but very proud of my SILVER!!!

An experience to remember for the rest of my life, I wouldn't trade it for the world. I'll have time to elaborate later (right now my family is distracting me with their Christmas in China fiesta...going through their bags and bags of Olympic stuff!) 

I just wanted to say thank you for all the emails and posts, I LOVE hearing from you guys, it makes this all so much more special. Especially reading what you were doing during the games, who you were with, who was cheering for us.....bowling alley in Lincoln, Nebraska-AWESOME! 

We have a couple more days here to experience the Olympics without the fun of my own competition, which I will enjoy fully...but then, I can't wait to come home and share with you all my new fashion statement.....!

Going for GOLD

I've heard from so many people and my family has gotten tons of calls and emails! Thank you for all the support, it is amazing! We have cheerers around the world from Danville, Puerto Rico, Istanbul....and of course our great fans here in China!

Put on your USA gear and get out your USA flags because we're GOING FOR IT!

Questions answered...

Most exciting....I think our first game against China was the most exciting event so far. Opening Ceremonies was incredible and moving into the village was an eye-opening experience, but the Olympics didn't really begin until that first game. Walking out to hear the USA/CHINA crowd battling as much as we were battling in the water was pretty cool.

More recently, though, due to the complexities of bracket points, we beat Russia and still didn't know if we were 1st or 2nd in our bracket. So we all watched the Italy-China game in our apartment...we beat China by 1 and Italy ended up winning by 1, but because we scored more goals in our game (USA 12- CHINA 11) we came out first, which means we are playing for a medal! That was extremely exciting to realize last night as can be seen in this pic. (Not that we weren't prepared to play a knock out game...Its nice to already be in that semi!)

Most challenging...It is definitely a challenge to balance your focus here. There are so many events going on all the time with athletes all over the place, it is always exciting in the village. There are athletes that thrive at the Olympics and athletes that cannot handle the pressure/excitement. I'm glad we've had a lot of preparation with our coaches and sports psych, Peter, I feel that this team is handling the Olympics like pros.

"Off days"...other events...While it is important to stay focused on what we want to accomplish, as with anything, it is just as important to maintain a sense of normalcy. Last night after the game, we were able to have dinner with our friends & family! It was great to sit with them and hear their experiences from China for longer than the short time after games we see them.

Off days aren't actually off days. The days in between competitions are spent preparing for the next game. We actually spend most of the day at BNU where we practice, eat, rest, and get treatment. So so far haven't been going to any other events, just watching EVERY sport on TV, live. That is really fun, especially when other athletes are around watching, cheering for teammates and friends...just a fun atmosphere.

pic (post dinner with the fams)


Mentors...All the returning Olympians have acted as guides for us newcomers. They've been here before and know what it takes to win at the Olympics. Natalie Golda, Heather Petri, and our captain Brenda Villa can pump us up or calm us down depending on the situation....so far its worked out pretty well.

As far as my position goes, we defenders tend to stick together and talk a lot about centers, defense, strategies....it helps to have teammates to talk situations out with.

Sleeping....I've actually been fairly healthy and getting in some good sleep. We've been here long enough to adjust to the crazy time difference, the food is good, and at BNU the food is stellar so we are actually doing well in that spectrum.

Any Questions?

In the next 24 hours I want to open up this blog to everyone…feel free to post comments on this post with whatever questions you would like to ask….about

Olympics

water polo

my team

the village

and I’ll do my best to answer them all in my next post!

Clarissa & Marco

A little team tradition (or my tradition that I forced upon the team) .....

On my first trip in the summer of 2006 (we circumnavigated the world…Hungary, Italy, China) I created Clarissa….I was the alternate for the World Cup in Tianjin, China and I didn’t have much to do and still wanted to do what I could for the team. So I pondered for HOURS upon HOURS about what I could do for them and then it hit me…ok so this is not actually how it happened, really I had crayons and paper and thought I could be of use by making a paper person so that we could easily see the outfits we were wearing day to day. Describing the red T-shirt with stars verses the red T-shirt with stars and stripes, gets a little silly.

So I created a paper girl with outfits that m

atched our own and since then, the tradition has continued. Olympic Clarissa is extra fancy with her own closet full of gear AND lamination, key to the reusability of tape for her clothing. Recently, an addition has been made so that Clarissa could have a friend…and Marco was born. Kyle has really taken a liking to Mr. Marco, who was made for the coaches in the Canary Islands (from lunch conversations, it was known that they needed some help).

Here we have Clarissa and Marco ready for their first game!

First night of the Olympics

We pretty much spent all of last night watching fencing, a sport we know NOTHING about. But it was fun figuring out all the rules while writing a lengthy email to Teddy, my fencing friend, with all sorts of questions and comments on the women’s sabre that swept the event last night!

We are also keeping tabs on swimming and volleyball…pretty much all USA sports…The Olympics are so great! My only question is…where are the team cheerios? I remember them always coming out during the Olympics, but so far they are nowhere in sight….has anyone seen team cheerios at home?

~SECOND NIGHT~

First game! So the Games have begun (I can't divulge any game specifics yet), but it feels great to get that fist game under our belt. And after the game...we got to see our friends & family! I got a little emotional seeing Teresa with a little run when I walked out, and the rest of the fam just behind her, I teared up a little, just a little...And Dad's whistle before the game almost broke my "game face," but it was good to know they were there among the huge crowd of USA fans. Our fans were definitely rivaling the China fans...we had a GREAT crowd!

TV times

If you know the TV schedule for our games, please let me know so I can post it on here for everyone.....muchas gracias!

Thanks for the information, check the comments for TV listings in PR and California

Lighting the Torch part 2

A couple more highlights from 08.08.08....

-We had a multitude of electrical issues getting ready for the night. Of course, Jimmy, our Opening Ceremonies outfit enforcer made it clear that our shirts (even though they were under our jackets) and our pants MUST be pressed. Thanks to some home-ec helpers, we got that under control with the hot hot iron. Unfortunately the straightening iron was not so hot, we spent a good 20 minutes using a slightly warm one until we realized we had to change the converter settings. To make matters even speedier in our getting ready process, the hair dryer was a problem...it was more of a hairwhisperer, not much power on that thing.

-So my team's future employment opportunity...?
Bodyguards! So the basketball team, as you all know, did walk, which was great but I'm sure it was as exhausting for their smiles as it was for their legs (by the way, its very tiring for your legs if that point didn't get across earlier). Our team, as usual was being our cool selves, just enjoying the moment together and who walks over in a crowd of people? Our pal, Kobe. At first I think he was trying to escape the photo shoot for a couple minutes, but then Brenda started talking to him in Italian and he was hooked (He grew up in Italy). He spent a good chunk of the "in-the-middle" time with us and we were able to intimidate lots of fans away. He was a good sport about it though, I was very impressed with his patience.

-Saturday morning's practice was extra special because we had some visitors from the court above us step in to watch. Jason Kidd and Chris Paul both walked in while we were scrimmaging Australia at BNU. I didn't even see them! Guess I was very focused on practice...I did meet both of them the day before, so I don't feel too bad. That was very exciting though, we still have a deal to teach them water polo when the competitions are over...The pool at BNU is very shallow, though, so they actually could have the upper hand with this one....

What a long experience....the hurry-up-and-wait game was played all night,but certainly worth the time.

Lighting the Torch

Let the Games begin!

What an incredible event...Apparently the plan Moriah and I made worked! Wave at EVERY American flag and at EVERY camera and we'll make it on NBC. Thanks to the multitude of messages I've received today, NBC caught our excitement at some point in that very long lap, I did not realize how long that track was!

It all started far earlier than what you all saw on TV.

3:00 - eat the last meal and then get ready

5:15 - USA meets to get on the bus to head to our special VIP meeting

??? 7 ish - The Bushes arrive in the Fencing Venue

7:30 ish - Take pics with the President, the former President and the First Lady in our fancy outfits

8 ish (Ok from now on its ish)- arrive in the Gymnastics Venue with all the other teams walking in Opening Ceremonies....They had waters and "food bays" for us including a bread roll, a banana, 2 mini snickers and some chocolate cookie shortbread swirl things (I actually enjoyed them greatly and ate Elsie's). We sat here awhile in the TOP TOP section where the heat and humidity was aquiring, of course. Sweating like CRAZY! This part of Opening Ceremonies is really cool because we get to sit in a huge gym with all the countries participating... from afar, we comment on outfits, find competitors, join or decline to participate in "The Wave" and wait. Eventually, they put video from the beginning of the Ceremony so that we could at least see what was going on while waiting for country no. 139 in the Chinese alphabet. I do NOT understand that since not even all the countries starting with A were next to each other.

9 - We were escorted away from our seats in the clouds and were so glad to finally be moving, but we didn't get far before we hit yet another waiting line! We careened out the Venue and through the open parking lot or plaza (?) and just chilled with the USA delegation for another 40 minutes or so. This is also the time I left the line (yikes!) and gave 3 pins to the Virgin Islands in return for one...I was so generous because I just love that place a lot...anyway my favorite part of walking down the line with women's volleyball, synchro, baseball, beach volleyball, men's soccer, track & field and more was the chanting for Kobe by the throng of volunteers lining the fences. By the way, I have no idea where he was at this point, but he was not visible to the volunteers yet. Anyway, one of the other guys (unfortunately couldn't see who it was) raised his hands to the crowd and the Kobe chants turned into cheers (I'm still not sure if they were just happy to be acknowledged or they were really pumped to see Kobe even though it wasn't him...?).

later - Eventually we made it into the tunnel, this is where the butterflies really set in. We were hugging each other and taking pictures, video, jumping....who knows, but we were so ready to enter that stadium. Our team is so big (596 athletes + any other staff that walked with us) that I didn't even hear the USA team announced, that's how far behind we were! Walking into that stadium was, for me, the final realization that we had made it to the Olympics, the goal we had been looking towards all year and honestly, longer than that for most of us!

That's all I have the energy to divulge at the moment... I will edit this post tomorrow in between practices or afterwards depending on my life to add more details and emotions, whatever.

COMING SOON:
An inside scoop on my team's future employment opportunity AND our special guests at practice this afternoon.

Family Blog

Since my blog has been SUCH a success, my family wanted to jump on the bandwagon and create one also....they'll have the outside perspective and I'll have the inside scoops, but theirs will most likely be more informative in the upcoming days as I'm going to spend more time focusing on water polo and they will be roaming around the whole Olympic scene.

The Steffens blog is now posted in my favorite bloggers column.

Random pics and thoughts....

This is my first Olympic Credential....yes, the actual one....And yes, it says OLYMPIAN on it....this gets me into BNU Beijing Normal University, which the USOC has taken over parts of so that we can use the facilities. There is a great weight room, a pool, gym, track, and more. We also are able to utilize the training room (staffed and created by the USOC), the incredibly delicious restaurant, athlete lounge (equipped with movies, video games, board games and the largest TV I've ever seen), computer room....its a great place. We will be training there for the rest of our time here.

And a little pre-meeting basketball to get the blood flowing.....a great decoration idea....good work Elsie and Alison!

Next, we have the Olympic mascots....the water sports one is blue and here we are doing fancy cartwheels in front of our happy audience....


And this morning, the USOC hung USA flags on our windows! For at least 3 Olympics and PanAms in Rio we were the only country not allowed to display our flag, but I guess someone finally gave the OK! I feel very proud to have these up...very exciting!

Up and Running

We've been here a couple days and so now I feel like a village veteran. I had my time to be a fan and explore everything but now...its coming close to competition time. Opening Ceremonies tonight marks the beginning of the greatest tournament in the world and while it is very important to experience it all, we also have to remember that for our team, simply qualifying was not good enough...we've set our goals higher. I'm sure tonight will be an absolute spectacle... you can feel the anticipation throughout the village as it is getting more and more crowded.

We went to our venue to train yesterday and it looks great. The water is cold, but the air is breathable inside...we'll see if that changes with 3000 people in there. We scrimmaged against Australia for a little bit to accustom ourselves to the pool and then once we were changed and showered we came out to a little lounge to wait for our buses with snacks, water and coffee sitting on the table for us to eat.


And for the water polo-minded, the pool is set up for the men's games, which are 30m long...ours are 25m. So they will adjust the goals to 25m for our competition, but the benches are not moving. So not only do we get to sit way behind the goal line, but the shot clocks are MASSIVE and situated directly in front of half the bench seats....its a funny situation, hopefully it all gets worked out. (Above is a picture of the pool from the Good Luck Beijing Tournament in March)

AHHHHHHHHHHHh

Sorry to everyone who was not in the athlete lounge just now...I knew this was a good place to hang out

The whole men's basketball team just walked in here---no big deal, and a couple meaning only KOBE signed my GINORMOUSLY HUGE t-shirt!

I'm too distracted and tired to post pics, sorry you'll have to wait

comments

In order to leave comments...I know a few have gotten confused....

- create a google account
- leave a messsage

If you are creating obscure account names, please sign your name so I know who you are....

A Peaceful and Beautiful Village

There may not be blue skies, but the ground is looking beautiful inside the village. Gardens, statues, mini ponds with stepping stones across them...our walk to the cafeteria and to the international zone is quite nice, especially when we are walking past and with Olympians. Some are world famous (Nadal sighting in the dining hall, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh talking with my teammates, extremely huge athletes and tiny ones) and some I don't recognize, but we are all here to compete...we've finally made it to The Games.

Some specifics:

Rooms - We have 3-room suites with a middle common area, complete with chairs, table, air purifier, water purifier, and TV for live coverage. My roommate is Heather Petri, who's blog you should also check out (labeled Petie) and so far we have turned our white-walled room into an American masterpiece! We put up pictures and notes above our beds to remind us how we got here, a USA flag in between us and lots of red, white & blue bling to remind us who we represent, and a monstrous XXXXXXL t-shirt compliments of Carlos (Dad) from an earlier trip to China that will hopefully be signed by many athletes to remind us that we aren't the ONLY cool ones in this town.

Food - One huge dining hall, which so far, even when crowded is still manageable. Today, Al and I wanted to be adventurous at lunch and sit next to and meet some sociable looking athletes, but we chickened out a little bit...finding the edge of a table in between some tall Deutschlanders and a group of Americans. We found out the Americans were the women's field hockey team that had just arrived from the US, but we didn't even attempt to make contact with the Germans...maybe at dinner we'll do a better job. The food is actually great we have cereal, sandwiches, pasta and salad at every meal with a few other Mediterranean and Asian dishes. And of course, how could I forget McDonald's also serves us burgers, nuggets and fries while McCafe provides the coffee for free, all day long.

International Zone - Post Office, Salon, Media Center, Environmental Center, General store, Olympic Merchandise Store...and many more places I can't remember. We got free t-shirts made from 4 recycled bottles in the environmental area that will later be used as a pin-trading local. I haven't tried it on yet, but I'll let you know if it feels like a t-shirt or like I'm wearing 4 plastic bottles.....Also, we started talking to one of the girls working there and somehow got on the subject of school. She was soooooo excited that she was meeting 2 girls from Stanford and kept repeating how lucky she was! Her uber-excitement, I think, stemmed from her recent application to Stanford class of 2013, how cool would it be to see her roaming around school??? She was VERY into recycling also...sounds great to me, Good Luck Su Mi!

...there are VERY strict rules to what we can post and I don't want to get in trouble for something like that. I will get some up, but I need to double check with the authorities first....

OLYMPIC VILLAGE

We finally made it here!!!!!!!!!! Wow...

Leaving DaXing....

I am so sad to be leaving this place, so I decided to record the memories to keep forever....

The bowling alley in the pool building.....


The weight room next to the bowling alley, those windows to the left...they're overlooking the lanes, we had such a great time doing circuit in the humidity without any air circulation......


And of course, the statues...and the sun was out that day, that was lucky....



So as we say goodbye to DaXing, now the fun begins...we are just now packing up to head over to BNU and then to the Olympic Village!

Team Pump Up Mix

Ok I cheated, I just copied this list from Heather Petri's page. I planned on just sending you to her blog, but that seemed lazy and irresponsible so a good old copy and paste has been deemed a much better plan.

Here is our Olympic Pump Up CD, the songs we each picked correspond to our number...

1.Take Me Out-Franz Ferdinand
1.I'm Shipping Up To Boston-Dropkick Murphys
2.The Way I Are-Timbaland
3.Mercy (feat. The Game) [Remix] -Duffy
4.This Way-Dialated Peoples Feat. Kanye West
5.Eye of the Tiger-Survivor
6.You-Atmosphere
7.Lose Yourself-Eminem
8.Stronger-Kanye West
9.Tear It Up-Yung Wun

10.Numb/Encore-Linkin Park (Ft. Jay-Z)
11.American Boy (ft. Kanye West)0-Estelle
12.Forever-Chris Brown
13.Grace Kelly-MIKA

WARNING: Use at your own risk. Listening to these songs is potentially dangerous...it could cause an intensified adrenaline rush.

We have already had an incident with Elsie's parents who claim to have listened to the playlist using YouTube and then became too pumped up to sleep.