Nathan’s AAU Junior Olympics Blog

Posted on July 29, 2008 at 1:24 pm by James Glover

We arrived in Philadelphia (Fri 27th July) after 22 hours travelling and the lovely heat of about 26 degrees and 90% humidity. We started training on the Sunday (29th June 2008) with a quick 1 half hour session with the 10’s & 12’smixed, after this session I was asked if I would play for both the 10’s and 12’s (only one other player was also asked to do this and we both thought it was a great honour and experience)

The 12’s first game was on the Monday and we narrowly lost 5-3 in the last 30 seconds. The first 10’s game was at 6am on Tuesday 1st July (we had to get up at 4.30am Philadelphia time ).

Over the next 6 days I played the following amount of games :-

Under10’s
I played 4 games in the International Competition and we finished in 5th place. In the AAU Club Competition I managed to play another 7 games and we the GB 10’s team finished with a bronze / copper medal. In all these games I scored a total of 4goals out of the GB total of 15goals.

Under12’s
I played a total of 7 games in the International Competition and we managed to reach the semi-finals and then unfortunately lost to the eventual winners – but my team and I finished with a bronze / copper medal I only managed 1goal in this division as most of the players were 12 & 13 years of age. In the AAU Club Competition I again played 5 games and we made the Quarter Finals – only to find out later that we had actually won another bronze / copper medal.

Overall I played a total of 23 games over the  6 days at the two different age groups.

We played teams from the USA , Hong Kong , Australia , and some of the various outstanding club teams from all across the United States. This was the first time that all Great Britain teams at age groups had come home with at least a medal each.

During the trip we also watched the GB 18’s win the World Championships and the 18’s International Competition, this was the first time in a lot of years that anyone had managed to defeat the USA DREAM TEAM on their own turf.

I the gellery page there are a few pictures of me with my team mates from all across the UK and some of me with my medals. I have been asked to attend the trials for next years team (the exact dates will be released soon) but hopefully I won’t be the only player from Northern Ireland who decides to attend.

Thanks again for the coverage in the Spectator before I went out to Philadelphia – it was a definitely great experience and one that was totally worthwhile , I made a lot of new friends worldwide and the fact I managed to come home with some silverware was the icing on the cake.