Follow Up and Next Steps

During the trip the team decided that a blog for the season would be fun for everyone and so we will be editing the title of this blog and also uploading a significant number of photos from all the chaperones and girls. Instructions to follow shortly.

U 14 Dance

Parents and friends -

It is 10:30pm local time and we just wrapped up a 2 1/2 hour dance culminated by chaperones from the boys and girls team, dancing to the utter dismay of their children.

What a way to wrap up the week. We awake in 5 1/2 hours for our journey home.

Too many video's from tonight to upload so it will need to wait until we land in the U.S.

Again, it has been a pleasure for us to spend so much time with you daughters. They have played well, represented Far Post Soccer Club very positively and most importantly have bonded together as a team. They are truly fine young ladies!!

Great fun.

Over and out!!

Keith, Wendy, Marie and Dan

Last Day in Holland

We are wrapping up our trip today in Holland by meeting the boys and touring PSV stadium. Going into the inner sanctums of one of Holland's great stadiums. After the tour we watched the U-18 PSV team play the Hague team to a 0-0 tie.

We have arrived at our final night here at the hostel. The girls have requested a "dance be held" in the lobby and boys have obliged. Great photos to come when we return.

It is 7pm local time.

The dance starts shortly. We hope to have all in their rooms by 10pm since the bus will be picking us up at 4am sharp for our 2 hour drive to Amsterdam airport. This puts us at the airport about 2 1/2 hours before our scheduled departure for Logan Airport.

The weather has been absolutely fabulous for the kids and they have really grown as a team and as young ladies. You should all be very proud.

We are hoping to be at the Soccer Center by 4pm. Be on the lookout for the "email from Dan@northstarleasing.com" sometime about noon giving you an update. Feel free to send an email to that address if you will be away from the computer and you want a call. Just send me your cell number.

This trip will remain with all the girls for years to come and one that will forever have positive memories to look back upon.

See you all in a less than 24 hours.

Wendy, Marie, Keith, Dan

Fridays Activities

Today we had our final training. After that we took a fabulous trip to the American Cemetary where 3401 US soldiers killed on Dutch soil in WWII are burried (a truly awsome experience). After that we walked to downtown Maastricht where we had a wonderful lunch and did a bit of shopping. We ran back to the hostel and doned uniforms for our last game. which, as Dan told you, was a great success. The girls won 2-1, even though the refs tried to let the game go longer to allow the Dutch team to try and tie the score.

Room 13 (from Tues)

Better late than never. Room 13 writes--

We all get along even though:
-someone was too vigorous with the toilet flusher (that would be Kate Raska)
-we got locked in the bathroom
-someone spazzed out in the middle of the night because the front door was locked (that would be Allie)
-a smelly bathroom (caused by us)
-and someone snoring ….

Other than Darth Vador visiting us every night from the bottom bunk we are able to cope
We all bring something good to the table! So far Holland been awesome
Singed: speed showerer, ant finder, fart and goer, hilarious laughter, the waker-upper, sky pooper all better known as the silver terytactyls.

Girls Win 2 -1 End Holland trip 3-1

Girls win big with a very strong performance 2-1.

Two beautiful goals scored by Iris and some big saves from Alyna.

The opposing team had a player who plays for the U14 National Dutch team.

Very exciting game.

More to follow.

It is now 8:30pm and we are heading to dinner.

Tomorrow is an off day and we head home on Sunday am.

All the best to everyone.

3rd Game in Holland - 3 -1 Victors

What a nice game. After a difficult, hot day of training the girls came to play.

The team from Holland was twice the size of our girls. The game was reff'd by the opposing coach who may have thought we were playing rugby. No calls during the first half but our girls played very well moving the ball around the field.

Evy blasted a left footed volley from about 30 yards out over the keeper's outstretched hands for a 1-0 score. This was followed about 10 minutes later by Iris converting a throw in from Emma to make it 2-0. Late in the first half Evy put a corner right in front of the net and Meg D was able to get her foot around a girl (three times her size) and put it in the net.

The opposition was able to convert a corner kick full volley in the second half and the game ended 3-1. The feelings from the coaches and the parents on the Dutch team was not as cordial and fun as the first two games but after the game, the girls were able to gather for about 15 -20 minutes before we needed to head back to the hostel.

We had a late night BBQ with Nat N and Elise cooking up some burgers, spare ribs and sausages for the entire gang on the deck overlooking the river. visit stayokay hostel and search for maastricht location and there is a picture of our deck.

We have our last formal training today with Behr - a wonderful 65 year old Dutchman who pushes the girls during training and his hard work is paying off in the games. The girls are becoming better at "building" from the back as apposed to just "blasting the ball" forward. I think you will all see a difference when we play back in the states.

We will try to get the girls to post a few blog entries today along with photos.

We go into town today after the morning training and will break into 4 groups and eat at local cafes and tour the city. Later today we head to the US Cemetery from WWII which we hear from the boys group was an excellent visit with much history.

All the best to you all and the girls are all fine.

See you soon.

Keith, Dan, Marie, Wendy

PS: if you have specific questions, use dan@northstarleasing.com and we will incorporate into blog or reply directly.

PPS: The weather here has been exceptional all week and today is no different!!

Off to Game

it is now about 5pm local time.

We just had a small snack and are heading out to our game in about 45 minutes. Very warm on the field today and it showed with the girls all being a little tired and hot. They worked on drills with our trainer (coach) Behr who is working very well with the girls.

We will update the blog later tonight with photos.
We were all commenting that we can not believe we are into this trip 6 days with only 4 to go.

More to follow later.

All is well here.

more photos

Kate R; Emma F; Laura M; Katie R enjoying their training day off.

pictures of the past few days

The streets of Maastrecht are invaded by U14 Far post Girls

Room 15 repots

OMG!!!
The first day, one of our beloved "Pretty Committee Members" got the nasties. Gross,we know right, but its all cool now!:)

Second day, we pulled out the inner PaulRevere in NN (Nat Nostrand). We know you are pretty confused, right? ..... But in the end..... wait now you will never fully get it.

Hold up - we've got a story for you. Once upon a time, in the StayOkay hostel there was a girl with a really bad mullet. The "original pretty committee," was instantly inspired, and SIS (strutted in style). Back to our main land, aka the last room on the left with the lice infested duvycovers, but we will get to that later.

WWWWWAIT, slow down, let's back up. We forgot to tell you that the second day we all slept in an hour late. Our groovy den mother (Daniel John Patrick Feeney) got a key from the main desk and barged in and was like "guys, you were supposed to be up an hour ago." The "pretties" sat up in fear of missing out on the "delicious" dining experience. After sissing off to breakfasts the pretties rushed to be first ready for practice. Of course once we were packed and ready to go - training was delayed an hour.

Natalie aka Scarlette
Meghan aka JJX (Cross)
Emma aka Chantal
katy ShaNaNa Johnson
Laura aka la-A (pronounced La DASH A)
Jody aka Amber
Emily aka Kimmie

After wining our first game 3-1 we rode back to our hostel for our beauty sleep. As we were drifing into a good nights sleep we were disturbed by a burst of gas. Not Gasoline - not once but twice. Evidence proves that it was not ShaNaNa or Chantel.

For the first time in room 15, with lice ingested duvay, we woke up on time. Once the long practices were over the "pretties" began to clean their room and repack their Beautiful clothes, they discovered a colony of ants under Laura's bag. Once frantically vacumming the entire floor we finally felt safe to let loose in our lovely mainland. Feeling rejuvinated and refreshed they pretties joined their team to play a select team sooooo...... the prettier and the their team were a bit backed up - which (being a pretty) is hard to admit! The fruit helped clear our pipes.Thanks chaperones. Now we are leaving to get some beauty sleep.
FYI - tonight is our last committee sleep session before our big move.

TTYL - Bye. Room 15

Travel Day - Wednesday 4/23/09

It is now 8:30am local time (2:30am EST) and we are letting the girls sleep in today to about 9am. They have had two very intense training days. The days started with an 8am breakfast, training, a break, lunch, a break, training, break, dinner and then games against local Holland Premier Clubs.

After breakfast this morning, we pack and load on the bus for a 10:30 departure for our next location - Maastricht where the boys have been since Sunday. Today is an off day to let the girls bodies rebuild and a day for all of us to visit another beautiful part of the country. We will be touring the city and spending a few hours "scavenger hunting" throughout the caves under the city. This is one of the highlights that the girls have been speaking about since we landed.

We end up in our new hostel later this afternoon well rested, rejuvenated and ready to train twice a day Thursday and Friday with games in the evenings against local clubs there.

Girls Blog/comments are forthcoming along with photos.

They are all doing quite well and yesterday's game against Bavos was a good effort learning and trying a new formation and the BBQ after the game was fantastic. The Bavos team got on our bus as we were leaving and wanted to come with us and most of the girls exchanged email addresses. the Bavos Club had printed up posters and hung them around town showcasing the upcoming game against "the American's from Vermont". Each girl will get one as a souvenir with a picture of each team and Bavos videotaped the game for us on DVD.

Marie, Keith, Wendy, Dan

PS: All the posts come up as written by Dan but they are a group effort that we should videotape and turn that into a blog.

Bavos - 2nd European Game Summary

It is difficult to put in words, how the Far Post Girls and the Holland Girls interacted after the game unless you were there. So we will not try to do that and will ask your daughters to tell you about it when they come back or when they do their own blogs tomorrow. As a parent it was an exceptional opportunity that we will remember for many years.

The pictures which are self explanatory will be uploaded later tonight. Unfortunately we did not capture the Holland Girls running after our bus waving goodbye as we drove out of the parking lot after sharing a great BBQ.

Oh yeah we lost 3-0 to a very talented bunch of young ladies.

More to come tomorrow.

Room 14 Blog - Far Post's Best Room

On the first night in our hostel everyone felt like we were in jail. Since then we have grown to almost like the hostel. It is hard to get accustomed to waking up with 7 people in the room especially at 7:45 and with only cold water in the sinks. Another group was staying at the hostel that first night and decided to have a party over our heads. After being awake 36 hours that did not sit so well with us. Iris and Evy went for help and Dan had to interfere. The next morning Lisa overslept and had to wake up to Elise clapping very loudly in her face. It has never happnened again...... With what little time we had over the next two days we were able to use our duck tape to decorate our room. We got quite attached to our room. On the second night it was hard for the room to go to sleep as Elise had her first power bar and entertained the room. She and Iris spent sometime arguing over "some guy". Elise did eventually stop talking. In the third morning we had to send a note under the door because we were stuck and could not get out (actually -- we just didnt unlock the door). We actually had to try and climb out the window. That night we had an ant attack. Evys bag was infested and we even found larvae. That was not to be the end of bugs in our room. Laura found the smallest bug in the world and freaks out, even the manager stopped by to make sure she was ok.

Ok, now we are off to Maastricht and new room mates! We will miss our Room 14 though

Celebrating their 1st European Victory

After the match, Evy, Iris, Allie, Elise (she really likes her potato chips), Kristin, Sarah, Sarah, Lisa, Meghan and Megan celebrate in fine fashion before bording the bus.

Our girls thought that having their own locker was pretty cool! They're in the big time.

Tonight's Match vs. Schoepel

Note the smiles on all the faces of both teams after a hard fought match against a team that was much larger than ours. We all enjoyed a nice photo and a social gathering after the match under a warm, sunny sky.

In Holland, it is customary for clubs to have phenomenal facilities for their soccer clubs and this was no exception.

The girls put in use many of the lessons from training taught by Behr, including ball posession, short passing, ball control and transition. The result was a well played 3-1 victory. Two goals by Iris and one by Sarah Shiman on a great individual effort. Far Post outshot our opponents in the first half by a total of 18-5 as per Lisa Wood, statistician extraordinaire. Alayna made several great saves throughout the match.

Congratulations to Wendy Elles for the first International victory for the U-14 girls team. The girls are unailavable for comment as they are currently being interviewed by Sky Sports which can be seen locally on the east coast on ESPN29.

The Fruit Man Cometh

After three days of fruit deprivation (and possible constipation), the Fruit Man Cometh, delivering enough for a small village - you have never seen your girls eat so much fruit. Kiwi and pineapples were big hits.

The extra energy from the fruit was most excellent and enough to sustain the girls through 4 hours of training and a 3-1 victory over a local Dutch club.

Recap of funny events

Now Marie and Wendy get some airtime:
Just to let you know how your children are doing

• Started the trip with an adventure in the airport. Marie learned how to cut the security line when Jodie lost her boarding pass and had to return for new one -- but Jodie found it in the bathroom.
• Elise is having trouble understanding that bikes have the right of way in Holland, we have rescued her several times. Liz and George she is unharmed
• Bikes, bikes, and more bike -- no helmets no shoes and no age or size limits
• Saturday was our first and a German last at the hostel. Thus the sleeping schedules did not mesh. Shut up in any language is easy to understand.
• Quote of the day "Soccer players are smart and lazy and you are neither" -- said to boys team
• More quotes "Emma please take a picture with your dad" said dan -- see picture of Dan and Emma and 19 other players
• Compared to Seacoast we are fine. Only one causality -- Allie cut her finger trying to break out of her room sleep walking.
• Look for Laura M befriending Darth Vader --- photos tomorrow

In front of the Ajax stadium on Saturday. Tour of the stadium on Saturday. Gave them our advice, they get crushed 6-2 by PSV 24 hours later. Far Post no longer invited back to Ajax.

A unique feature of Ajax stadium is that they use heat lamps to grow the grass (retractable roof, the sun doesn't strike the whole pitch).

On the canals of Amsterdam.....

This in Amsterdam on Saturday. While walking around the city, a quick bathroom break was needed and a great opportunity for a photo.

Thanks to Wendy!!!!! We can post photos quicker.....

(From the peanut gallery) Todd - Thanks for the Club Seats and dinner in the luxury boxes. The ride up to the seats in the helicopter was fantastic! Send tissues - all the kids have nosebleeds. Didn't know smoke could actually go down?

See Earlier Post

We got a photo loaded!!!!

Girls at the PSV-Ajax Soccer Game

Here's a shot of the girls at the soccer game this afternoon. In the words of Dan "Anytime you have to duck when a plane goes overhead, you know in the upper deck!" Great view and fan enthusiasm.

There's lots of text here. We're waiting for the photo to load and Marie's another beer. Photo still 99% loaded.

email questions

Until we have the blog working properly, feel free to send comments and questions to Dan@northstarleasing.com and I will add answers / comments to all next time I post.

Best,

Dan

Keith's Comments

Dan asked for another entry, so here's some thoughts. We're all having a great time. We arrived yesterday on-time in Amsterdam and went right into the city for 1-1/2 hours before heading off to Ajax (pronounced I-Hax) stadium for a tour. Picture 37 fourteen year-olds and 8 coaches taking a stroll through the Red Light district at 11 am on a Saturday morning - the kids got a little education.

We returned to downtown after the tour, then took the 1 hr 45 min drive to our Hostel in Valkswaard (sp?). It was fairly crowded being a Saturday evening and a group from Germany was a bit noisy - but most slept quite well (I can't really speak to this as I was out like a light and according to Meg, can sleep through noises such as crying babies (many years ago)).

Dan outlined today's activities fairly well, but failed to mention that he and Marie showed up a bit late for the training session. We have a short walk on a set of trails through the woods to the practice field. Dan and Marie left shortly after the team for the fields and navigated the woods and much of the town for roughly an hour - was quite comical hearing the two of them share the story. The training session was very good. Behr, the trainer, had them working on ball control and ball possession and had them working hard and focused - should be a great soccer experience for them.

The PSV-Ajax game this afternoon was quite an experience. 40,000 screaming, passionate soccer fans with the home team coming out on top 6-2. Plus, a new culinary delight - french fries with mayonaisse. After the game, the bus dropped us off back at the hostel and the boys have moved on to their new location in Mastiight (sp?). We will see them again on Wednesday as we "swap" locations and then will reconnect on Saturday.

We'll try to get some photos up soon!

PSV - AJAX Game

What a day. Trained early this morning for two hours with our Dutch trainers. The girls really did well.

Around 1pm we headed into town to watch the PSV - AJAX Game (yesterday we visited the AJAX stadium in Amsterdam) and watched PSV demolish AJAX 6-2. A very high scoring game for a game of this caliber.

We are having a great time. Girls are all ok.

Will try to upload pictures later but am having a difficult time with uploading photos.

Monday is a big day, training in the morning, training in the afternoon and a 6 pm game against a local premier U14 team. We do the same thing on Tuesday as well.

All the girls are playing pool and air hockey down in the Hostel lobby.

Just finished dinner - it is 9 pm local time here.

All is well.

Dan

Saturday 4-18

Great trip over on Friday. Spent all day in Amsterdam walking the streets. Beautiful city.

Girls start training this morning at 10am.

More to come later today.

Keith/Dan/Wendy/Marie

Traveling to Boston

We are on the bus. We stopped at MacDonalds and are fairly confident we have all the kids. We let Evy Jacobs do the counting and she forgot to count herself!!! We watched National Treasure and all seemed to enjoy that. More later........

Parents Updates From WKMD

parents and friends, - We will be updating the blog throughout the trip with photos, comments and updates on the trips events.

We are new to this so comments are appreciated.

WKMD
(Wendy, Keith, Marie and Dan)

U -14 Girls Trip to Holland

friends -

please use this blog to document the U14 Trip to Holland - April 17 - April 26, 2009