Team Identity

Well, the month of November has been flying by us here. Tomorrow we are in the 1/8 of Coupe de France action in Villard. Normally we should be the heavy favourites entering the game but with our recent track record of letting the weaker teams stay in the game, more and more teams have hope against us. Last Saturday in Gap is a prime example. This team is much weaker than us and have played in Division 1 the past two seasons. They have a few good players but the most dangerous is that they believe they can beat us. It was so close this time that we only tied it up with 1:40 left in the game, before winning in a shootout.

This has already happened a few times this year and still never costing us a loss, but I believe that last Saturday was a real wake up call and we should see a powerful Briancon team hit the ice tomorrow, winning battles, driving the net hard and just simply outworking the other team. That is our game plan. With our talent, if we start beating teams by work ethic and not just skill, we will be a very dangerous team.

On a side note, Team World lost today's Soccer match vs. Team France. The score was uncertain as the French team, most likely inspired by Thierry Henry's blatant hand ball against Ireland last week, turned a blind eye to many offsides and hand balls of their own as they cruised to a one sided victory.

On a personal note and on going head to head battle, I scored early to make it 2-1 on French goaltender Damien Raux :)

Ultimate Frisbee

While we are still waiting for a few of our teammates to get back from their National teams and after 5 days off, we were back in the gym and back on the ice Friday. With 2 training sessions per day for Friday and Saturday we had a day off today and rejoin again tomorrow morning at 9am. As the team's strength and conditioning coach, I am in charge of organizing and running our teams workouts. Since we have been working so hard in the last two days, instead of the scheduled Core Circuit planned in the gym, I think I am going to change things up with a game of Ultimate Frisbee.




This is a very common sport in Vancouver and though I lived there for 5 years, by no means does that give me the title of an experienced player. I believe I played only a handful of times with my Human Kinetics classes, but I am familiar with the rules and will be happy to explain them tomorrow morning in both French and English with my teammates. This will be a nice change of pace for our team, give us a good workout and keep that competitive nature going as we face Chamonix in the 1/4 of the Coupe de la Ligue on Wednesday.

Not sure what the teams are going to be for tomorrow yet but for our soccer games we have usually done France vs. The World. If this is the case, France will be missing Damien Raux who is representing his country but Team World will take a big hit missing the leadership and work ethic from Victor Szelig and Edo Terglav, who are away with Team Hungary and Team Slovenia respectively.

This is all weather dependent as we did have some snow fall today in the Alpes. Stay Tuned!!!