Day 1: Opening Ceremonies

Since this is the first time that all of these girls will be at Regionals, we wanted them to experience the opening ceremonies so they could understand what a big event that they are taking part in.

A bunch of us had met up early at a local restaurant and we watched the Turkey vs Croatia Euro game before heading over to the ceremonies.

Unfortunately the Opening Ceremonies were an absolute joke.  The first 30 minutes were spent hearing all the local mayors tell us to spend lots of money in their cities.  Then they had the various organizers give a little speal to everyone, which was fine.  The last time Regionals were in Rockford they had Jonathan Spector from West Ham Utd, not Westum like the DJ said, talk to everyone and he gave a really good speech.  I was looking forward to having the girls hear him talk, but he is away with the National Team so they just played a video speech from him.  Decent talk, but no where near as good as having someone in person.

Then it was time to recognize all the teams who were participating.  But the DJ had no clue how to pronounce over half of the team names including Bangu and Edina.  For the last bit the DJ kept pumping up the special ending they had in store.  They brought in fog machines and it looked like something really cool was going to happen.  Then they started playing Jock Jams and they had a 1980's laser show to the lyrics up on the big screen.  It had nothing to do with soccer and after 3 songs everyone in the Metro Center got up and left.  It was so bad that everyone will always remember it and looking back on it.  It was pretty hilarious.

The girls were able to laugh about it and we left to make our way to our hotel where we had dinner with the U15's from a local pasta place.  We then had our team talk and sent the girls off to bed anxious for tomorrow.