Men’s Pan Am Youth Blog – Day 10

February 7, 2010

Opening Ceremonies and Our First Match Against Mexico

Today we woke up ready to play our first game of the tournament.

The day started off like usual – pancakes and eggs for breakfast at the hotel.

Everybody seemed nervous and excited to play our first match of the tournament. This made for an interesting mix of feeling while waiting to be driven to the field.

Before the game, there was an opening ceremony where all 5 teams follow a brass marching band out onto the field. Afterwards, speeches were made by the tournament organizers and other field hockey officials. The opening ceremonies were meant to be 20 minutes but to our surprise, lasted at least 45 minutes. During the ceremony we watched some traditional dances performed by some dance group in Hermosillo. The tradition dress worn by the dancers was a buck deer and a wolf sort of custom. The performance included dancing, acting, singing and traditional music instruments.

Due the lenght of the open ceremonies, our game starting time was postponed by 30 minutes which gave us plenty of time for a good warm-up.

During the game everybody seemed nervous and at the beginning we were very pumped up. This might have worked against us.

We won our game against Mexico 1-0 due to an excellent goal by Justin Dhaliwal #12 and an amazing goal keeper performance by Alex Smith #32.

After the game we were all very happy to have won our first match.

Our day ended by eating dinner and then watching film footage of the match.

We all hope we can keep up our good play and finish out the tournament strong.

CJ Roydhouse #1

Canadian National Men’s U-17 Field Hockey Team Member