After a disappointing loss to FC Gold Pride three weekends ago we, at Sky Blue FC, knew we had a lot to work on in the week to come. As a reward for all our hard work that week Heather O’Reilly and I decided to treat ourselves to two brand new guitars and hopefully some lessons. Eager to improve, I headed out to NYC to meet up with HAO for what we like to call a “jam session,” which is actually way less cool then it sounds because I am actually awful at playing the guitar – hence, lessons. Speaking of which, I think HAO and I would gladly trade training/skill sessions for guitar lessons, just throwing it out there into cyberspace because you just never know, do you? Right, so after plucking our six strings for a few hours we decided to get some food at a sweaty, cramped, delicious Mexican restaurant called Tortilla Flats just round the corner from HAO’s and boy it was packed! We ended up eating outside because the inside of the restaurant was literally the size of a small prop plane but that didn’t keep us from enjoying ourselves, the hoards of drunk people piling in and out of surrounding restaurants, cabs and weird Partridge Family buses was especially entertaining.

Last Saturday finally arrived fashionably late and before we knew it we were headed to Chicago via Detroit. Sounds pretty boring right? Well, it was, except for one awesome incident at gate C17. We had heard through the grapevine that Ndamukong Suh, Detroit’s number one draft pick and the NFL’s #2 overall was in the terminal. Yael Averbuch and I built up the courage to pay him a visit and he ended up actually being really nice, and interested in who we were and what we did. How cool is that?! Anyway, we asked him if he would mind giving us a little shout out and he did. (Ndamukong, thanks for that we really appreciate it. Congratulations and good luck.) Anyway, we boarded our flight to Chicagoland, landed, went to training, then dinner, followed by the customary team meetings, then bed. Ugh.

The following day was game day and it ended up being a little more eventful then usual. We woke up, went down to breakfast and noticed one of our teammates Yael Averbuch wasn’t there. She had become rather violently ill late the night before and was taken to the hospital for fluids. Unfortunately she was confined to her bed for the rest of the night and was forced to watch our game via matchtracker, which I’m sure only made her nausea worse. While Ya Ya was being seen to, the rest of the team had a pre-game meal to eat, but when some of the girls came downstairs they had red, swollen, glassy eyes. We asked what happened and through their giggly sniffles they replied, “we were watching Marley and Me…”

About an hour after pre-game, we left for Toyota park and kicked off at 5pm against the Red Stars. It was absolutely freezing and blowing a gale but we started off strong regardless of the conditions. Unfortunately, disaster struck after about twenty minutes or so when Carli Lloyd broke her fibula. At the half, the conditions had significantly worsened. No longer did we have the luxury of with the wind at our backs but now we were faced up against a massive head wind and torrential, needle like rain for 20 minutes. It was a battle, but fortunately for us luck was on our side that night and we came away with a win.

Don’t forget to catch us today, Saturday, May 1, 2010 at 6pm EST at Yurcak field on the campus of Rutgers University as we, Sky Blue FC, take on Marta and FC Gold Pride. If you can’t make it out the game it will be televised on Fox Soccer Channel but I for one would definitely love to see you all in person!

Hey. Smile. There it is!

KB