On our last day in Argentina we had our last practice with Pablo! We worked on defense for an hour and a half. We then thanked Pablo and presented him with a gift. He told us that he believes we will be very successful this year because we work so hard together. We rode the bus back to the hotel for some last minute packing and showering.

We then rode our bus to a buffet restaurant where everyone loaded up on food before the long trip ahead. We stopped at one of the largest malls outside Buenos Aires on the way to the airport and did some shopping for ourselves and family members before heading to the airport for our flight. Many of the girls bought clothes from stores only found in Argentina thus, creating a one of a kind style for our team!

On our final leg of the trip to the airport we passed a truck full of cows at a toll booth. Everyone laughed hysterically because Coach Jenn Rauscher claimed throughout the trip that statistically we see one everyday of our lives. We actually managed to see at least two a day the entire trip so you can imagine the laughter when we saw a truck full of cows.

We finally got on our flight to Atlanta at around 8:30 pm that night and headed home! We hugged and kissed Silvina and Carolina goodbye and thanked them for everything! They were such wonderful guides!

We had a team run this morning and a lift with Strength and Conditioning Coach Cory Walts. We anticipate the our first practice on our new turf will be this evening!

Our first season game is this Saturday versus Stevens Tech. We are playing in a tournament at Stevens. On Sunday we will also play Arcadia before heading home to begin the school year at Haverford. Everyone is very confident that what we learned in Argentina will translate to a successful season. However, as Coach Quinn always reminds us, “Success does not come to you, you GO TO IT!” and we most certainly will!

Thanks for following our blog this last week! Come out and support our team this season at our new turf at Swan Field!

This morning we ate breakfast and boarded the bus for our clinic with Pablo at CCBA.  We had an excellent session. Everyone was working hard and applying the new techniques we had learned over the week. Everything seems to be coming together.

After practice we boarded the bus for our community service activity at the Maria Nuestra School. The school was not too far from St. Catherine´s. We really enjoyed our time at the school. We met and spoke English with a wide age group of students. Most of them were 15 or 16 years of age but, we also spoke with younger girls and boys who were 12 and 13. They were all so friendly and welcoming. We talked about our favorite music, movies, where we are from, what we like to do in our spare time and our favorite subjects in school.

Afterwards we ate lunch in the school cafeteria. We headed out to the field to run a field hockey clinic with the school´s team. The girls were skilled but in desperate need of equipment and good coaching. We played warm-up games with them and then played seven vs. seven. We had so much fun this afternoon. The girls on the team were so sweet.

After the clinic at Maria Nuestra we headed back home to get ready for an evening of tango lessons and a perfomance. We had some spare time for some last minute shopping before we left for tango. We had an hour long tango lesson. It was so much fun! Everyone paired up and learned the steps. Our tango teachers were very serious but, we definitely have the steps down. We are just about ready for a debut performance upon our return to Haverford! Afterwards we entered a ballroom and sat down for a really tasty meal and a tango peformance. The dancers were amazing. Their costumes were so elaborate and beautiful. There were also several musical interludes by an even greasier version of Ray Liotta and his female counterpart. By the end of the night we were exhausted. We headed back to the hotel and hit the sack.

Our last day in Argentina is tomorrow! What a wonderful way to spend a majority of preseason. We´ve really got to know each other. It´s been an amazing experience. We have learned so much in such a short period of time. Everyone is trying to cram all the hockey tips into their brain in order to make this experience even more valuable upon our return.

We have our last practice tomorrow and then we head to the airport and back to Haverford! Upon our arrival we will be greeted by our gorgeous new turf field. We are incredibly excited to play on Swan Field this fall! This season is sure to be unforgettable!

We were also shocked to learn upon boarding the ferry that the ride would be three hours long. This was because on the way there we opted for a slower ferry and first class accomodations. We rode in style on the high sea! Everyone was commenting on how nice it would be if we could travel like this on our flights to and from Buenos Aires. We found ways to pass the time on the ride. Some of the girls cought up on sleep or read while the rest of us played our new favorite game Contact!

We arrived in Colonia around noon and promptly boarded a bus with our local guide. We ate lunch with other large groups touring Colonia for the day at a local cafeteria. We ate a variety of salads and appetizers and had the omnipresent meal of steak or chicken for the main course.

Afterwards we toured Colonia by bus. We saw the ruins of buildings constructed by Portuguese and Spanish occuppiers of Colonia. We also passed a very old bull ring. However, our tour guide told us that Uruguay has since banned bull fighting because of animal rights concerns.

We got off the bus to do a quick walking tour and visited the oldest church in Uruguay. We walked along the cobblestone streets and beautifully colored stucco buildings. We had some free time to shop. There were plenty of stores owned by local artisans. Girls purchased a wide variety of decorative items and clothing and maybe even some gifts for family members!

We boarded the bus and headed back to the port to catch the ferry back to Buenos Aires. This time we were assured that the ride would be much quicker. We arrived in B.A. only an hour later.

I´m writing this post with the free time we have between now and dinner. Some of the girls went in groups to explore the local artisan market. Dinner is at the Hard Rock Cafe tonight so we will be sure to get a taste of home! Tomorrow we are playing hockey all day and we are all looking forward to it. I´m pretty sure that everyone is addicted to this team by now! We can´t get enough of playing with each other!

Practice was great! It was so much fun. We met our Argentine coach Pablo. He has a lot of experience with the field hockey circuit in Argentina. He has played for the Argentine Men´s National team in both the Barcelona (´92) and Atlanta (´96) Olympics. He is currently the head coach of the Men´s U21 National Team. He was so sweet, energetic and patient. He spoke very broken English but, our Spanish speaking teammates helped to translate.

We worked on our creativity with the ball. We practiced a variety of ways to lift the ball, fake a pass on the move and dribble in the air. We played a fun four vs. four continuous game. Everyone was really excited and into the drill.

After practice we ate lunch at the club and hopped on the bus for a quick trip down the road to the Secretario de Deportes. This is one of the national facilities for government sponsored teams. We watched Pablo run practice with the U21 National Men´s team. It was incredibly intense. These boys were sick. We all “ooood” and “awwwed” at their incredible skills. I´m sure they didn´t mind pretty and smart Haverford girls as their spectators.

Afterwards we traveled to our first game. It was at another club about 30 minutes outside the city. Everyone was excited to finally play against competition. But, these girls were well beyond competition. They were the Argentine U18 Women´s National team. Several Olympic hopefuls suited up for them. Having never really played a full game together since arriving for preseason, this was definitely a learning experience. We had a lot of fun and afterwards we gave the Argentine girls our old Haverford jerseys and patches purchased from the College bookstore. We hugged and kissed the girls as is customary and took a team photo with them.

We boarded the bus back to the city. For dinner we went around the corner to a local chain pizza restaurant.

This morning we left for practice at nine. We met Pablo at CCBA and had an hour and a half morning clinic and practice. Pablo worked with our tentative offensive corner unit. We practiced our drag pushes out to the top of the circle. We had a stopper and a hitter practicing their corner skills as well. The rest of the team worked with Coach on possession, passing and communication in several drills over on another of the fabulous turf fields at CCBA. We all joined up towards the end to work on some more drills. 

After practice we left Buenos Aires and traveled to a ranchero to ride horses with authentic guachos (cowboys). While waiting in line to ride the horses we befriended a high school boys rugby team visiting from Scotland. We tried to play rugby with them but we were cut short by the necessity of lunch. We ate a traditional Argentine meal which included potato salad, cabbage salad and a variety of sausages as well as hunks of steak and chicken. We ate in a large dining hall on the ranch with a wide variety of other tour groups from all over the world including Australia and Canada. We watched a brief tango performance and boarded the bus to our game vs. a U18 team from CCBA.

Our game went more smoothly than the day before but, we still were trying to work out some of the kinks in our playing. The girls we played were talented but, we managed to score one goal on them from Zoe Lloyd and maintained possession for a significant portion of the game. Afterwards we presented them with our old uniforms and patches. They also swapped some of their jerseys for Haverford t-shirts and sweatshirts which many of our girls were excited about!

After the game, we headed back to the hotel and went out to dinner at Matias Restaurant and Irish Pub down the street from the Recoleta cemetary we visited the day before.

Tomorrow, on our day off, we are taking a day trip to Colonia, Uruguay! Look for a brief post on our excursion out of the country!

We arrived in Atlanta and spent a few hours in the airport eating burritos and Chinese food in anticipation of an unfavorable airplane dinner. However, we discovered our plane would not take off until ten o´clock in the evening. It would leave a full hour and 20 minutes beyond our expected departure. This was due to the late arrival of our airplane from the airport hanger it was sitting in. We finally boarded the plane and jetted off for Buenos Aires!

Everyone tried to sleep on the plane. Christine Gall definitely won the award for the most sleep accomplished. She slept soundly the whole time. We arrived to Buenos Aires International Airport at around nine in the morning as the first women´s team at the College to travel internationally for competition. We were greeted by a foggy mist and a cloudy sky. But, we couldn´t have cared about the weather, we were in Argentina! We met Carolina, our wonderful guide for the duration of the trip, at the airport. We loaded the bus and headed to our chic hotel in the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires.

After settling into our apartment-style rooms, we quickly changed and met in the lobby to go for a run in a local park. We had our first walk through the stylish city of Buenos Aires on our way to the park. The city resembles many large European cities such as Barcelona and Madrid in Spain. As we ran we made friends with local stray dogs and enjoyed park scenary.

We returned to the hotel, showered and made our way to lunch. Everyone agreed that it felt more like dinner since we had been up for a whole day already. After lunch, we met up with our city tour guide Ana. She walked with us to the Pilar Church, a Catholic church from the 1800s, located next to the famous Recoleta cemetary. We toured the church and made our way over to the cemetary. The cemetary was crowded with thousands of mausoleums maintained by individual families. It practically resembled a small city. We visited the gravesite of Evita Perón, a very famous former first lady of Argentina. She is loved by countless Argentines. We further toured the neighborhood of Recoleta and traveled by bus through the Palermo, La Boca and Puerto Madero neighborhoods as well.

The La Boca neighborhood houses the soccer team in its “chocolate box” stadium (as Ana referred to it). The tenament houses surrounding the stadium were brightly colored in all colors of the rainbow. These were and still are homes of immigrants in Buenos Aires.

The Puerto Madero is the business district of Argentina. But, it is also where ferries depart for Uruguay daily. There is a beautiful white modern bridge known as the “Women´s Bridge” that crosses the river bordering the Microsoft and 3M buildings. We ate dinner at an Italian restaurant overlooking the bridge and the river.

On the bus ride back to the hotel we were graced with several fantastic performances of Disney movie tunes. The team sang “A Whole New World,” “Part of Your World” and “Hakuna Matata.” Maggie Cronin performed “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice. Alex Waleko and Patrice Harkins sang “Baby Got Back.” Molly Braun and Christine Gall sang “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” And Margaret Selsor performed, with help from Christine, “I´ll Make a Man Out of You” from the movie Mulan.

As Assistant Coach Jenn Rauscher would say, “That´s a top ten moment right there!” I think everyone would agree that so far every moment has been a “Top Ten.”  It feels like we have known each other forever. That´s what happens when you spend every waking moment of the day with 18 amazing and talented girls.

Tomorrow we have our first clinic with an Argentine coach in the morning. After practice, we get to watch the U21 Argentine Men´s team practice before we play in our first game against the Argentine U18 Women´s team. Wish us luck!

After breakfast, we practiced for two hours at the Haverford School. We worked on skills such as passing, dribbling, and “shaving,” a technique that eliminates the defense. It was a good first practice but, I think everyone was a little nervous.

In the afternoon we sat with Athletic Director Wendy Smith and reviewed NCAA and athletic department policies. About an hour later we met at Featherbed Field to work with a team building instructor. We began with an odd but really fun warm up that represented the “tilt-a-world” ride at an amusement park (see linked pictures soon to come!). We enjoyed a lot of different games such as “linked tag” and a problem solving game involving stuffed animals and hoola hoops. We ended the afternoon with the freshmen leading a majority of the upperclassmen on a blindfolded adventure down a mound of dirt and across a field. The blindfolded upperclassmen we instructed by the freshmen as we manuvered a ball off of one tee ball stand to another using twelve strings. We culminated the evening with pizza and a discussion on what we had learned.

This morning we met for practice at 6:30 am. We worked on passing, one-on-ones and two v. ones to goal. But, most importantly we ran through our field positioning. It worked well and I think more of the kinks will be worked out when we match up against competition in Argentina! Everyone was really energetic and excited because our trip was just around the corner!

We ended practice and headed to breakfast. Everyone returned to their dorms to shower and do some last minute packing. Hopefully no one has forgotten anything! Sarah Graves said, “If I forget anything at least I have my passport!!!”

I’m writing this entry with only 15 minutes until we depart for Newark Airport! Check for a new entry upon our arrival in Argentina!!

-Ariel Herm ‘10

NCAA rules allow participating teams to make a trip abroad once every four years. Haverford will be making the trip through ZAG Hockey, which specializes in field hockey trips for college teams.

“The team is really looking forward to this trip to Argentina,” said head coach Colleen Quinn. “We are excited because of how well rounded the overall experience is going to be. Not only are we going to be getting prepared for our season by participating in competitive matches and intense clinics and practices, we are also going to be sharing in team bonding through our cultural experiences. I think our team is really going to grow on this trip.”

Haverford will play against some of Argentina’s stiffest competition on their trip. The country is known as one of the best in the world when it comes to field hockey. In addition to going through regular camp and scrimmages, the Fords will put on clinics for area youths.

The trip would not be complete without experiencing the local flavor. Plans for the trip include; city tours, ranch visits, horseback riding, food tasting, a trip to Uruguay, tango lessons, home stays with Argentinean families for one night and performing community service at the Maria Nuestra School.

Haverford’s trip is planned for August 18-27.