Since the last time I wrote, we have had a pretty exciting last couple days. It started with our last practice before the start of the real games. It was at our competition venue and we pretty much worked on the basics to get use to our environment.

The following day was Opening Ceremonies. WOW! Most of us only stayed for a little while due to having the earliest match the next day (9:30am), but the experience was great nevertheless. For the first-timers, they only assumed they knew what it felt like -- they had no idea. It was amazing.

Our first match was today against Lithuania. Although we knew it would be a fairly easy match, we didn't want to overlook any teams. The scores were 25-15, 25-18, and 25-9. We definitely executed our gameplan well. Our only goal out of today's match was to make a statement to the rest of the teams and to the world, that we were a contender for the Gold Medal.

We have tomorrow off and then we play China the next day. I will follow up then in hopes of having more to say. We hope to make our USA Volleyball family proud.