Thursday

Thursday

Today started out with an early morning training session. I got up after some prodding by my dad.   I got dressed to go, grabbed a bite to eat, and walked to the fields.  Our practice session lasted about 90 minutes. We started out with a cute game one of the younger boys wanted to play called Bedo Bedo (my spelling may be off). Once everyone understood what was going on, we all had a lot of fun with it.  After the game we warmed up a bit and broke into four teams. We spent the rest of training doing small sided stuff.  We were practicing at Manchester University fields.  While I was at practice, my dad was nice enough to do a few loads of laundry for me at the nearest laundromat.

After practice and a quick shower, we headed to my dad's most anticipated destination -- Old Trafford Stadium.  For those that aren't soccer fans, that is the home to the world's largest soccer club, Manchester United.  Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham, and current player Wayne Rooney are some of their most notables.  Old Trafford opened in 1910 and holds almost 76,000 for a game.

We got to go on a tour; we started in the museum. We wandered from room to room seeing trophies and literal history around all of us.  There were also jerseys, stats, old newspapers, and much more spanning over a century's worth of soccer.

        

My dad and I are big Wayne Rooney fans.  He is just awesome with the ball.  He only needs a few goals this upcoming season to be the all-time leading scorer in Manchester United history.

    

Here we are standing near the actual pitch. The tour guide explained that the field behind us is brand new. The old field had been gutted and pulled away to make way for new grass. It was hard being so close to such a beautiful field on not being able to go stand on it.

 



We visited both the home and away locker rooms.  Here I am with Jessie, Nikki, Matt (he's a coach), and Sammie posing in the home team's locker rooms.















The visitor's locker room had jerseys and pictures up of some of the most famous players to dress in there. Abby Wambach and the US women's team played one of their Olympic games here.

 

After the tour, we took some group shots. The left picture is every player that goes to Crown Point. From top to bottom, left to right we have Sammie, Maddie, Nick, Me, Abby, Sela, Emmie, Libby, and Emily. On the right it's all the same girls we just had Nick step out so we could get a Crown Point Girls Soccer picture.

Here is a picture of all the players on the trip in front of the Manchester United Stadium.

 

After the tour, we headed back to the hotel for dinner.  We went back to the same fields as this morning to watch the boys play their game. Then both girls teams kicked off at the same time.  Our opponents today were again really good; their ages ranged from 17-26 -- more of a women's team than the girls teams we are used to.  We held our own for the first half but not so much the second half.  We had two girls help us out; they were both really nice and talented.  They are both heading to the US to play college -- one in Virginia and the other Mississippi.  They stayed after the game to chat with us, and we all exchanged social media information to keep in touch.  They are excited to head to the US.

Here I am taking a corner during the second half of the game; we almost scored off of it!

Finally, I wanted to make an announcement -



Well, not really, but I hope to have some sort of signing sometime during my senior year.  I've applied to a few different colleges that I hope to continue my career after high school.  I know I have to put some time into that process, but after this summer and coming on this trip, all I can think of is playing my senior year and having a great time.

More tomorrow,
Delaney

Wednesday

Wednesday

Well, I thought the travel woes were behind us.  The ride from our hotel in the London area to Manchester started at 8:00 AM and was to have us arrive in Manchester at 12:00 Noon.  Well, we made it at 3:30!  There was an accident on the major highway, so we had to divert to some side roads. It was like taking the back roads instead of I-65 down to Indy. I basically spent the entire bus ride sleeping in a million different positions.

Once we got settled in, we had a good meal in the hotel. Due to the boy's previous game being cancelled, they had a new game set up for today. The girls were given the choice to train or watch the boys play. We all decided since the boys came to our game the day before, we would watch their game in return. I grabbed my soccer bag to carry my phone and other necessities, and we departed for the boys game in Manchester.  Since I did have my soccer bag with me, I also happened to have my soccer gear -- turned out to be a good thing as the boys team needed some extra players.  And as you know me, I am always willing to play!  It was a really cool opportunity to play. They had quite a few good players on the other team, so it was neat to challenge myself against them.

After we got back to the hotel, we were hungry. My team and one of the younger girls decided pizza sounded really good, and we found a pizza place to eat near the hotel. After devouring our pizza, we stopped at the McDonald's next to the hotel for some McFlurries. Then after enjoying our ice cream, we all just hung out in the lobby until I couldn't stand not showering anymore! Lol

Finally, I was able to soak in the tub and finish up my two blogs.  Need to get some rest now and be ready for a practice in the morning and a game in the evening.

More later,
Delaney

Tuesday

Tuesday

Today's schedule was a trip into London, a game and then back to the hotel.  It was a great day, but full of mishaps.

Traveling today was miserable.  As I mentioned, we are about an hour and a half from London. Today was one of the hottest days of the year, reaching temperatures in the 90's.  Mix that with a double decker bus that has no air and no windows; I was about to pass out!  Next, the boys had to cancel their game because of group of "travelers" or gypsys that came into the town and decided to take over the fields.  The law allows the police to kick them out but with a 48 hour window.  The traffic leaving London to our games was extremely bad; it took an extra hour to get to the game, and we were late. Finally, on our way back from our game, we got held up in traffic due to an accident. We stood at the same point for about two hours.

With all that being said, we still had such a great day.

The bus dropped us off at the London Eye. We jumped in line right away (Dad made me "move quickly" most of the time this week).  It turned out to be a good idea as we were up in a car soon after and when we got out, the lines were hundreds deep.

The London Eye is well built, as my dad said, and he didn't have any problem with going for the ride. He is not a fan of ferris wheel type rides, even at the county fair.  They loaded 25 people into a pod, and we had some awesome views of the city.





We headed straight to the tube after we got off the London Eye and headed to Abbey Road. We stopped in the Abbey Road Studio to check out all the Beatles stuff.  Then without getting hit, we crossed the iconic street.  There were a lot of others doing the same thing; I guess it's like that every single day.







We got back on the tube and headed to find a pub; my dad wanted some Fish & Chips.  We found a really neat place, and he said it was very good.  None for me, thanks, seafood is not my thing. I had a steak instead.  We walked off the food and stopped at Sherlock Holmes Pub.  Since we didn't have time to go to Baker's Street, I wanted to stop in to check it out. It was so cool seeing all the items they had throughout the pub. They even had a beer named after Sherlock and Watson.



We met up with the group to head towards our game.  We played at a professional team's training grounds.  The fields were in excellent condition.  Our game was on one of their newest fields with the latest turf technology.  Our younger girls team earned Three Lions United its first International WIN; beating the other club 2-1.  Our team did really well, also.  The club team we played had three different levels, and we played three 20 minute periods.  We had the advantage the first period playing against their U17 equivalent team and ended 0-0.  We continued to play a second period to a 0-0 score with their next oldest team -- their U18 team and older girls coming back from injuries.  We lost 0-2 the final period to their professional reserve team; college age girls that are a step away from playing in the premiere league.  A couple of them came off our game and suited up for their top team which was playing a boys team next.  Even though we lost, we played really well and hung with them most of the time.



It was planned to be back on the bus and then to the hotel by 9 or 10, but due to that accident, it was after midnight.  (The reason my blog is late today.)  What do you do when you are stuck on the highway with 30 teenagers?  Sing, of course!  We had sing-a-longs to entertain the bus.  From the National Anthem to Queen songs, we sang them all.  Graeme even sang his National Anthem (God Save the Queen) for us! That special time would have never happened had we not been stuck, but it will be one of my long-term memories of the trip.

Take a listen...

We are having a traveling day to Manchester on Wednesday.  We got back to the hotel, packed up everything and slept for a few hours before we got up and had to get on the bus again.

Despite all the travel issues -- it was another great day!

Love,
Delaney

Tourist Day

Tourist Day, Monday

So, today was our non-soccer day.  We headed into London (we are staying about an hour and a half from the city) for the day.

We started at the Tower of London, a historic castle located on the north bank of the River Thames. It was founded in 1066. We had a great tour, saw a lot of really neat stuff including the Crown Jewels (no photos allowed of them)! It was amazing seeing inside of buildings that were hundreds of years old.

 







After a quick pizza lunch at a place called Zizzi, we headed to our next stop.



We went on the Tower Bridge -- probably the most recognizable bridge as it is now an iconic symbol of London.  They recently installed a glass floor on the bridges; we had some cool views.







Since we got to see a lot of stuff yesterday, we decided to do a couple non-traditional tours.  The first was Shakespeare's Globe -- a replica of the original theatre from 1614 about 800 feet from where it first stood and Shakespeare did all his plays.  Did you know that all these phrases were attributed to him?





















We were lucky enough to see the actors doing a rehearsal of The Taming of the Shrew during our tour. There is going to be a thousand people packed into the area we were in. Our tour guide shared some really interesting facts about Shakespeare's gift for entertaining the audience.



Then we headed to Churchill War Rooms; these rooms were preserved after WWII.  Churchill had his cabinet meetings in them and made four wartime broadcasts from them.



We took a walk to Trafalgar Square.  We then on to Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square.  These are the entertainment areas of London -- similar to Times Square in New York -- lots of theaters and shows.  This weekend they had the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) premiere, red carpet and all.  We stopped in their big sports store Lilywhites -- 6 levels! An entire floor dedicated to futbol; this was just their room of clothes.  There were more rooms on this floor -- including one dedicated to just cleats:



We tried to get some pictures as the sun was setting.









All-in-all, we walked over 12 miles and almost 30,000 steps according to my dad's fitbit!  What an exciting but tiring day.  I did manage to keep my boyfriend updated on everything throughout the day!



Cheers,
Delaney

Sunday

Sunday, Day 2

We started out on a bus to London this morning from our hotel. We got to see the rolling hills and country homes, typical in British movies, on our way into London. Once we got there we did a quick walking tour to help get a feel for tomorrow which is when we get to do our day of sight seeing. The first thing we saw was Buckingham Palace. Dad and I posed for a picture in front of the gates.

Right in front of the gates was a gorgeous statue of Queen Elizabeth.

We took a picture in front of that statue as a group. All three teams got in it!

Sammie and I took a quick selfie on the steps leading up to the statue.

As we continued our tour we got to walk through a very pretty park near the palace.

After we walked through the park we got to the Guards Museum. Dad and I took a picture in front of the whole building.

 The changing of the guard begins there. Sammie and I snapped a picture in front of one of the guards right before the ceremony. 

While we were walking along we saw a few phone booths. Nikki, Jessie, Sammie, and I all posed together before we continued on.

Our next stop on our walk was Big Ben.  We took lots of pictures along the way.  I took one with dad, we took a group picture, Dad took a selfie by himself, and we took a selfie together.

Jessie also whipped out her selfie stick, so we all huddled together to take a fun shot in front of Big Ben.



After Big Ben we ducked into a tiny shop and grabbed a light lunch before my first game. As we were walking to the bus, I was able to take this picture across the Thames River of the Eye of London (we get to ride it later this week).

I snapped a selfie right before we got on the bus for our first game.



We played Barking Abbey School today and lost 5-1. It was an amazing experience. I scored my first international goal in England! The other team was super friendly and were fun to talk to. It was actually kind of funny discussing differences between our homes. Plus it was fun listening to them talk and hear the different sayings -- "Bloody Hell".



After the game, we had our bus ride back to the hotel, dinner and a walk for ice cream.  Now it's time to call it a night!  

Love, 

Delaney

We are here!

We are here!

It's Saturday night -- we are getting ready for bed at 9:30.  However, it's just 3:30 for most of you!

It was a challenge making it this long as we got up around 8:00 AM on Friday, and we are just now getting to a bed for sleeping.  We did doze off a bit on the plane but that's not really comfortable.

Before we left Chicago, we ran into three members of the Olympic Track Team.  It was really cool for everyone that was waiting.  You can tell they were embarrassed taking pictures with us.  We wished them well in Rio!

 

The flight was about as interesting as an 8 hour flight could be.  The screens in front of us had an option to track the flight.  Here is a picture as we were just leaving North America.  I was also able to watch a couple movies to pass the time.

I had an middle row aisle seat, but one of my teammates took a few pictures of the sunset as we left North America.  It was dark as we crossed the ocean, and we got to see the sunrise as we approached London. 

We landed, headed to customs and waited for over an hour to get our passports stamped.  Once we were done with that, we picked up our luggage and met our tour guides.  Our big group of 72 got on a double decker bus and headed to our hotel (for the next four days).  We grabbed some lunch and headed out to our first training session.  We have three teams - my 98/99 team, a 00/02 team and a mixture of boys.  

I'm pretty exhausted from not getting any real sleep since we woke up at 8AM on Friday morning. I'm headed to bed!  More tomorrow.

Love, Delaney

Trip Countdown!

It's that time - we are getting ready to go on our trip. Once again, thanks so much to everyone who helped make the trip a reality for me and even a little left over to help my dad go with me. It's hard to believe that it is already July and that the trip is so close. We are super excited to go and enjoy the experience. This is unlike anything that I've gotten to do, and I'm so grateful for your help.

This past week as I was going over the itinerary, packing list, and things to do -- I delivered the first batch of baked goods!

Please make sure you check out my Daily Blog Posts starting on Saturday, July 16th.

-Delaney