Huge Week for the Gold Diggers

It's the beginning of a very important week here as we prepare for our game against the London Blitz in the semifinal of the EFAF Cup. The winner of this game gets to take on the Wild Boars from a place in Serbia that I cannot spell off the top of my head. As a team I know we are excited to play in a game of this magnitude and are embracing the challenge.

Well, let's rewind to last week. On Thursday I helped out on behalf of the team at a field day basically for kids in the Søllerød  town area I guess. There were hundreds of kids, it was unbelievable. I got there with two other players around 12:30 and left at 4:30. We brought some shoulder pads and helmets and some bags for the kids to beat up on instead of each other. The kids loved it, and I wish I would have taken a picture of the little kids in big ass pads and stuff. We had a couple kids that were there a long time. I made good friends with a little guy named Bjorn. We really couldn't talk because we knew little of each others language, but we was able to say some things such as "thanks" and "my name is". At one point he told his friend to say that and say what his name was, but I didn't catch it. I thought it was so neat that a little guy was trying to speak English to talk to me. I'm pretty sure I taught him how to say throw, since we played catch for a long time. It was an absolute blast.

The most difficult part was obviously not knowing the language that the kids were speaking to me. I would either respond by just saying English? (Ron Burgandy style) or taler engelsk and they would understand. If they looked puzzled, I would call one of the other guys over. The really neat thing would be when the kids would try to speak the language. I just know that if I were younger and learning a new language, I would be a bit shy to try to speak it. Towards the middle part of the day, I may not have understood everything, but I could pick up on words or actions and realize that kids wanted help with shoulder pads, or a helmet or something like that.

After that, I had the U19 practice as we prepped for the biggest game of our season so far against the Copenhagen Towers. It went well and we felt rather prepared going into Saturday.

Friday was a fun day as I met up with AG, Lars, and Simonsen to see the Hangover 2. We went to Simonsen's apartment and killed some time playing Call of Duty and NCAA Football before we had to leave. We then got some food and devoured some all you can eat ribs before enjoying the movie. The Danish movie theater system is much different that in America. Here, you have to reserve your tickets in advance and go pick them up in the theater before the show. Seating is assigned, and I'm not sure if you can pick you seat or really how that works, so there is no benefit to getting there super early for a movie to get good seats. We all thoroughly enjoyed the movie, as we have been talking about seeing it since the trailer came out. I enjoyed the laughs very much. We then went out for a bit, but I left early as I had to get up for the U19 game against the Towers.

I woke up in top form ready for a battle as we took on the visiting Towers. The game definitely lived up to the hype as we took home a 26-15, well earned victory. The first quarter was a battle for field position as we had the ball deep in our zone a few times. The offense and defense played a good game and allowed us to win. As a DL, we played some pretty solid football, but we made some costly assignment mistakes that hurt us at times. They did a great job taking in the coaching of the week, which was a big focus on hitting the QB when we get the chance, and boy did we rattle him! My favorite play of the game came in the 4th quarter as we are battling in a tight game. The Towers have the ball in their zone and throw complete a pass. Our DB is there and catches up to him to strip the ball and we recover it and are on the verge of returning it for a touchdown when the play just kind of stops. Apparently there was an inadvertent whistle somewhere along the way, which means the play never existed and is replayed. Great. The U19 has had at least 3 inadvertent whistles in their games this year, which is 3 more than I have ever had in my life. Don't know what the deal with that is, but whatever. The very next play, instead of tucking our heads and getting pissed, the Towers run a screen pass. Like a fantastically coached, smart DL, we have a few guys putting pressure on the QB, and our end reads the screen and covers the RB. The QB throws it past the RB right into one of our DBs hands. This time, no inadvertent whistle, Gold Diggers ball. One thing I noticed that I really loved seeing on that play when I went back to watch the film was one of our DBs. This DB, who is a smaller guy, went to take on their biggest OL with no fear at all, just trying to block for our guy. I absolutely loved it! The game ended and we celebrated a hard earned victory in a great game.

One of the parents takes pictures of the game. Here is the team after the big win!

After the game, I went over to one of the OL's apartment which is right by the field. We stuffed our faces with barbecue, which was absolutely delicious. I love barbecue and am so happy with the insane amount that I ate. We also watched the Champions League final and hung out. It was a lot of fun. I ate so much food, that I really didn't eat much of anything yesterday, I was so stuffed from Saturday night. Today, the weather got nicer and it didn't rain for the first time in what seems like a week. Like I said earlier we are prepping hard to travel to London and get the W. Hopefully the next time I right, we will be headed to the finals of the EFAF Cup!

Congrats Zach!

Congratulation to my lil bro Zach on his high school graduation tonight. When really thinking about coming here to Denmark, I looked at some days I would miss, and this one of the big one's for me. I am really proud of the little guy and wish I could be there for him like he was there for me at Truman screaming his lungs out! i love you buddy and have a fun night--you deserve it!

Life in Denmark has been swell. Friday was some kind of holiday, and there was a football game between the Demons and Rebels that I joined Esben in attending. The Rebels head coach is also a part of the U19 National Team with our coaches, so we know him pretty well and he is just a great guy to be around. The Rebels beat the Demons 43-17 with some good playing by both sides. The Rebels have a QB/WR from Harvard who is a fast, quick, and shifty guy. The holiday on Friday threw me for a loop since I wasn't really used to watching football on a Friday afternoon.

Saturday the U19 Team played at the Amager Demons. The Demons had a total of 14 players at the game, but we came out flat. I told our DL in warm-ups that we look like we've already won the game by showing up. The first quarter was tied 0-0, but we picked it up and rolled on with a 46-6 win. The most disheartening thing for me though was the amount of personal fouls we picked up. We played with very little discipline (however I cannot say that as a generalization, we have some solid quality guys that were trying to squash it all), but just loosing your cool in a game is something I have never understood, let alone when we are delivering a beating, why be a jackass. That stuff just weighs on me a bit I guess. After the game, we went to the house of a former Gold Digger coach who lives right by the field. He had a big BBQ for our players and we were there for a while. It was a super nice backyard area and a ton of fun to hang out with our coaches and players, not to mention some good food!

Also Saturday night had the game of the year so far in the National League as the 3-0 Copenhagen Towers traveled to Vejle in Jutland to take on the 1-0 Triangle Razorbacks. The Razorbacks have played few games which is I believe due to one team being dropped in the NL (long story that I don't really know short basically).  I heard from a lot of the guys that went as well as from following twitter updates that is what a game that lived up to its billing. The Razorbacks edged the Towers by 5 I believe. We were originally scheduled to play the Razorbacks June 4th, however due to our EFAF game in London, it has been moved to later in the season. We get the Towers twice due to them being in our conference, once in late June right before our summer break, and once in August right after. Those are games that mean a lot to our club (as I have been self banned from wearing any purple to keep from any teasing/ beating I may take at the hands of my teammates).

On to Sunday- the senior game vs. the Kronborg Knights. The Knights have not won a game so far under their new head coach and have had some time to prepare for us and threw some new things at us, and didn't do too much of some things we may have expected from them. However, it was not enough as we won 62-0 with the game being called towards the end of the 3rd quarter due to the skies opening up ferociously. They were a hard fighting team that wanted to play football. At one point, two of their players were telling their coach to stop yelling at the refs and let them play. That gets some respect in my book.  My shortfall of the day comes on my general lack of ability to score. My first chance game on a bad snap on a punt from about the Knights 25ish yard line. I kept rushing and I sorta nudged the punter out of the way and tried to scoop the ball, it took a bounce up to my chest as I bent down and bobbled off my hands, then I went to the fall on it idea and as I jumped on it, it shot out towards the back of the endzone where I though it would go out until one of our LBs jumped on it. TD, awesome. I got a lot of crap for that one, I really should have scored, but I blamed it on my ripped up gloves that have no grip. The second one was on even more of a silver platter as I blocked a punt in the endzone. I spun around to find it and saw it rolling to the sideline. With only the vision of TD in my eye, I take off after it. As I think okay, just dive, don't scoop, fall on it and prepare for the pouncing, I get tapped of balance by the punter and its puts my jump off from the ball. This time, Showtime gets his SECOND TD of the season thus confirming his Theory of following Ryan, which states that if you want to score a TD, follow me and wait for me to mess up, and it will be there for you. I just can't believe I have two chances and I came away empty handed. We also work on this stuff all the time, so I should be good at it. Hopefully I'm just saving it for a really crucial moment, like a go ahead TD or something cool like that!

I went on way to long about that. I am just in disbelief. There must really be an American TD curse on this team. I'm afraid to break it because of what happened when the Gold Diggers broke their last curse (injuries). So I really think I'm just being a team player on this one, not a klutz.

This upcoming week is an off week for the senior team, however the DL will get together for some conditioning as usual. Our focus is on the London Blitz and winning that to get the chance to play in the EFAF Cup Final, which would be huge for us! They are a solid team and we jut got some film on them that I will be watching. It will be good for us to play in a game of this magnitude after being relatively unchallenged the last few weeks.

The U19 guys have a HUGE week for them as they play the rival Copenhagen Towers. The Towers are the team to beat this year, and our guys really need to be focused up and have a good week of practice to play with those guys. I am looking forward to this game and will be coaching the hell out of the DL so we can be in a position to win!

Gold Diggers move to 4-0, 2-0 in National League

Last weekend was pretty football packed! On Saturday I went with Esben and met a couple guys at a game between the Copenhagen Towers and the Slagelse Wolfpack. The Towers play at a nice stadium and are unbeaten this year, and the Wolfpack entered the game winless. The Towers would appear to be our major competition in the National Conference as they are led by their talented American QB. The Towers started off quite fast, scoring 34 points in the 1st quarter on their way to a large win. I stuck around until the beginning of the 4th, as the score was getting out of hand (not quite 90-0), and the weather was starting to look bad. I got a ride to one of the metro stations and stopped in at a Netto to buy some food. I got home just in time to watch a 25 minute segment on Danish TV about the Gold Diggers and our trip to England. I didn't really know what to expect, and didn't find out more about it until Sunday, but it was really well done and freaking great publicity for our team. Apparently it is a TV show that follows around lesser known sports and focuses on a player, which happened to be our great Danish QB. The only real Danish thing I understood, kind of, was when they were explaining the rules of football and how it is played. I made my debut on Danish TV before I ever got the chance to be on American TV. I think my only shot at getting on the tube back home is to commit a crime--so I'll take my glory here.

Sunday was the longest day I've had since I was here. I woke up at 6 and the sun was shining brightly as I needed to catch the bus to arrive at the stadium by 7:45 for the U19 game at 11 am. Buses only run every hour, so I was super scared I would miss it and feel like an idiot. I was one of the first to arrive as I showed up at the same time as one of the other coaches. I was a bit in a trance as I am usually asleep at that time. I came prepared with breakfast and clothes for all types of weather (which I would need, as it was sunny, cloudy, and hailed for 20 seconds!). The players set up the field and we did some coaches stuff and ate our food and just got ready for the game. We won our game 50-0 and due to the mercy rule that takes effect after a margin of 50 points, the game ended around the beginning of the 4th quarter I believe, and we did our best to stretch it out. It's was just an amazing difference between the amount of players each team had. I would say we had around 25 guys on game day, they may have had 15. It just makes a huge difference having numbers, especially in a game like football. The guys played great and got the well deserved victory.

Our game kicked off at 3pm. It was the kind of game we expected as we walked away with a 61-7 win. Unfortunately, they scored, but we had some miscommunication of defense and they scored. Oh well. The most frustrating part of the game for me was my inability to block any punts. I was literally inches away 4 times, and I was getting just extremely pissed. I guess it's a good thing when I'm worried about my lack of blocked punts. I also got hooked up with my Gold Diggers gear--some shirts, a polo, hoodie, shorts, and sweatpants-- all under armour. I am quite a lucky person!

After the game, I went with some of the coaches to all you can eat ribs at the oldest amusement park on the planet. All of the information I gather is from Wikipedia (a pretty accurate view of Wikipedia can be found here). The origins date back over 400 years to people just being fascinated by a natural spring. People would always meet and gather there, and slowly tents and stand popped up. It was hard to tell what kind of route we were taking, but it seems like there were a lot of food places, some arcades, and a lot of carnival type games. Kim was telling me about a roller coaster that is so loud, it can only be run a so often so it doesn't disturb locals too much. We went to a restaurant and had all you can eat ribs and fries. Holy crap it was so good. There's a good feeling when you know you are getting something good that you don't eat often, like ribs, and know it's okay to have as much as you want. My favorite part when it comes to eating ribs is the sauces you put on them. This place had 4- a regular barbecue, garlic bbq, honey bbq, and chili. They were all equally as good. I personally enjoyed mixing the honey and chili, but that's kind of weird and beyond any point. I ate my fair share of ribs, more than I had all of 2010 I would probably say. That was a delicious meal. I slept like a baby after eating all that and having a longer than normal day.

This week, the U19 has a short turn around as we travel to my home, Amager, to play the Demons on Saturday. We are expecting to win here, and I am secretly hoping for another shutout. The Kronborg Knights travel to Søllerød on Sunday. The Knights are winless this year losing quite largely to the Towers and the Aalborg 89ers. They run a Wing T offense which is something I haven't seen since high school. Their coach is American and comes with high regard, and they seem to be heading in the right direction. They have had a few weeks off to sharpen their timing and should be fresh. It will be an exciting game for us to test our discipline.

What a Week

Last week was a pretty awesome week. It started off with waking up Monday and finding out that bin Laden was killed in a 40 minute raid in Pakistan. I have been doing my best reading up on everything and keeping up with all the news. I was super proud to be an American that day and had a good feeling. It was neat seeing it on CNN here and just hearing everything. I guess the view here is not quite as wild as it was back home, but it's still a good thing to have a huge terrorist leader killed. I think what is on a lot of people's minds is that terrorism won't just end with this, and we can't get comfortable. As an American, it's just a great feeling to know we got the guy who was responsible for the most violent attack on American soil ever. I am interested in the articles coming out now stating how Pakistan had to have been aiding him in some way since the house was extremely visible although private and that was their way of life. It will be an interesting time when more news keeps coming out.

Football-wise, it was a regular week for me, with U19 practice before mine on Tuesday and Thursday. We put in some good work and were ready for this game. The Jets were pretty unknown to us, and we didn't know what to expect. The biggest controversy I guess, was whether their former NFL and CFL QB would be back with the team. He "unexpectedly missed" there first game and we didn't know what to expect. Some investigating found out that he signed with an indoor team, so he would probably not be there against us.


Saturday morning rolled around, and the crazy trip to Coventry began. Before I get into too much of anything, I wanted to throw out there that we had a couple people with a TV station following the team on the trip up to England, mainly focusing on our QB. It was neat to get interviewed on the plane, and see the guys talking to them. The biggest thing that can come out of this is publicity and hopefully some sponsors. It's great for our team to get ourselves out there! Back to the trip, our flight out of Copenhagen was at 10:30 am and we arrived in London around 11:15 London time, which is an hour behind Copenhagen. I had to go through the non-EU passport way and had to fill out some paperwork and explain while I was here. It asked for occupation and address of where I was staying. I threw in coach for occupation to sound cool, but had to explain what was going on and why I had no idea where I was staying. I was very clear it was American Football, to which he asked if I played professionally in the States. I really could have messed with a customs agent, but just said nope, and went on my way. We waited for a while and boarded the bus for the 2ish hour ride to our hotel in Coventry. It was pretty tight on the bus as no one could really fit in seats, but we all made it work, and most people just slept. I was in the middle, but I don't think there was anything really great to see. We were just driving on the wrong side of the road, so it was weird boarding the bus on the wrong side.

When we arrived at the hotel we had our pregame meal ready, which was 3 types of pasta, which I devoured since I was pretty hungry. We then had about 45 minutes before we had to be ready to leave for the game. We took a bunch of cabs for the 5 minute ride to the stadium. I was one of the first few there and walked around. It is a rugby field, so it is a big space, with seating for about 4000 I believe. The field itself was hard as a rock though.

As game time approached, I was out early with some guys while specialist were warming up, and one of their coaches just came and talked to us, and he started talking about how good and fast the Cougars d-line was, which is true, they looked great against the Jets. I went back and watched our game, and it was all the same dudes and they didn't look as impressive. But I just nodded along and was like yep they looked great, but in my mind thinking, just wait until kickoff and then let us hear about speed.

The weather was pretty nice at kickoff- it drizzled a bit and looked like it would rain, but it never did. We won the toss and chose to receive. They boomed it deep, and we started the game with a return TD, 7-0 right off the bat. A series of events happened and we never really looked back, being up 30-0 at the end of what felt like the longest quarter of football ever, and up 66-0 at half. Long story short, the game ended 90-0 and we felt great. Some highlights of the game were two punt returns for TDs with some slick moves from out returner, as well as a couple bad snaps that led to safeties. My confusing play of the game came when I blocked a punt and the ball was bouncing quickly through the endzone as I pursued. I was thinking I could either let it go out for another safety, try to be cool and scoop and toe tap, or dive and swat it hoping one of our guys falls on it for a TD. I did just that and batted it backwards keeping it in bounds. Sure enough, Showtime ends up on the ball with the biggest grin on his face. Unfortunately, we all learned it is illegal to bat the ball in the endzone. I'm pretty sure its legal everywhere else on the field as it is done on punts to keep it out of the endzone, and I know you can't like swat it forward, but I never knew that you couldn't do that in the endzone. Kim told me later that the call was correct, and I am such a dirty player for breaking the rules. Unfortunately, I over thought and then felt stupid. If only I was dumb, lazy, and slow, the ball would have rolled out and we would have had 2 more points. Oh well, now we know that rule if we are ever in a close game!

The game ended and we enjoyed ourselves a bit, but quickly left the field to get back to the hotel. I showered
quickly and got ready to get some food and drinks. I was following around my roommate for the night and fellow DT, Rorbol as he helped me get some pizza from Dominos and got the first drink for the evening. I'm pretty sure Dominos was not happy with the large amount of food we kept ordering, but oh well. It was great food at the end of a game that happened. We all just stayed at the hotel bar and drank for the evening.  There was a wedding reception going on that I believe a few people crashed and it sounded alright. The time waster of the night came while playing one of those touch screen trivia games. I'm pretty sure among the 4 of us that gathered around there, we easily spent 15 Pounds on the game. It cost 50 pence to play and you could win up to like 20 Pounds maybe, but we never made it to the money rounds. It would ask a question with like 8 correct answers and give you 12 choices. Some of them were very British questions so we would be stumped. We came up with the genius idea that if we didn't know what one of the possible answers was, it was probably right. I went to sleep around 1:45 and slept for about an hour before we had to get up for breakfast at 3am before boarding the bus at 3:30 to head to London for our flight. We all shoved ourselves back on the bus and I would be surprised if there was a person that didn't sleep. I slept for pretty much the whole ride.

We got to the airport around 5:45 and our flight was leaving at 7:15. I went through security and forgot to put my contact solution in my clear bag, so they had to search all my stuff. The guy was a weird combo of angry/ nice. He started off by saying "So you have some liquid in here eh" to which I just responded I guess so what is it? And he came back with something making me feel like an idiot for forgetting I had liquid, but was then really nice talking while searching my bag It was weird, but it was 6:30, so I didn't really know what was going on. After all that, I had about 10 minutes to get to my flight before the gate closed, but I really had to use the bathroom. I knew there were people behind me, so I found the gate and luckily there was a bathroom right there, so I dipped in and did my business. As I was washing my hands, I heard people running outside, so I hurried out to see our coaches running by, so I joined in. it was a 10 second jog there, but apparently they ran from security for a solid 2 minutes and shoved their way into one of the trams to our gate as the doors were closing. We all made it and had safe travels and arrived in Copenhagen around 9:30. I got home around 10:15 and went to sleep around 11 for a couple of hours, but I didn't want to sleep so much that I couldn't at night.

All in all it was a great experience. Our next EFAF game is against another British team, the two time reigning champ London Blitz. It will be the weekend of May 28, but the location has not been decided yet. It would be huge for us to win that game. The Blitz are a fantastic team, and we are looking forward to the challenge, but first we have two league games against the Amager Demons, who we beat 58-0 in our first Danish game, followed by the Kronborg Knights, who have a new American coach implementing his system, and they are currently 0-2 in league play. I have 3 U19 games, including one the 28th, before the matchup, and i am really excited about there as we are really untested. It will be fun to get into the meat of the schedule and get these games going!

Two Month Aniversary!

It's been two months since I landed in that awesome place. Time really has gone fast, and our season is really getting ready to pick up, so now time will be zooming.

Football started up again last week which was a blast. On the Senior team, we were low on O-Linemen, so we weren't able to get much scrimmage time in. We also do not have any film on the Jets, so it's hard to prepare for them. We know the 81-7 loss to the Cougars is a blip on their season, and hopefully they will move on and be prepared to play us. The Jets are apparently a young team, so the loss may linger on, however, they are quite the opponent at their home field! Our team is fully aware of what winning this game means, so we are preparing like fools to get the job done! This week will be important for us getting some good work in and continuing to improve!

The U19 team had a bit of an abbreviated practice week due to their National Team game which was Saturday (I will touch more on that later)! On Tuesday we had about 18 guys in pads and went through most of our practice and then played some flag football. Thursday we had about 9 guys and had a pretty fun practice. Basically, we taught them everything about special teams, from kicking to snapping and returning. It was fun watching 3 of the DL waving for fair catches! After some time of that fun stuff, we did some individual time where we had the 5 other guys, who were DBs/WRs and a QB work with me and the OL coach to learn some stuff about the line and have fun, while the DL went with our Head Coach/ Receivers/ DBs coach. As a d-lineman, I always loved my time showing that I am athletic, no matter how funny I look running a fade. The biggest thing I was looking forward to was seeing the skill guys getting into a 3-point stance. Usually first timers look so awkward and goofy, but unfortunately for me, they all looked athletic. I went through about 5 minutes of quick prep, the OL coach took about 5 seconds of prep, and then we did some 1 on 1 pass rush with them. It was fun to watch, and they all had pretty good get-offs, them stupid fast guys. We ended Thursday's practice with some more flag football.

Friday, the d-line had a get together at one of the player's house. He recently moved in, and it is a beautiful home and had a nice porch area for some BBQing, which is exactly what we did. I brought and ate about 5 bratwurstlike sausages I guess, and then about 15 chicken wings, of which I only ate about 8. I ate the sausages slowly throughout the night as I drank more. We hung out outside during the amazing evening and enjoyed the great food. The later part of our evening was a Whiskey tasting led by our own Whiskey connoisseur, Lady. We got a quick prep talk about the types of whiskey and how they are distilled and how certain batches and bottles come to be. It was a pretty neat thing to learn, but hard for me to recall everything. We tasted about 6 different types I would say. One of the bottles was 1 of 350 to be ever made, so I feel pretty special. It was great tasting them, sharing thoughts and stories, and then drinking some more. The team's Mermaid Bowl rings from last year arrived, so they all got them that evening and were all so pumped. Just seeing those and seeing the player's faces and reactions when they put them on makes me want to do anything and everything possible to help them get another one!

Coach Carlos' ring, his most prized possession!

They are pretty stylin' and of course they were all taking pictures of it and posting to Facebook. After the BBQ, I went with a couple guys to a club in Copenhagen. A few more guys met up with us and we were about a group of 6 Gold Diggers just hanging out. I was having a blast just chilling with them and left about 4:30. I probably should have left earlier.

I woke up Saturday morning at 9:30 for my day in Vejle to watch the U19 National Team play. We have 5 Gold Diggers coaches on that staff, so it was supporting my coaches, as well as the 14 Gold Digger players representing their country. The players on the team all went through a 5 day camp to tryout for the team. My favorite part of it is that the National Team kept 8 DL, 5 of them are Gold Diggers, so I have some great players to work with. The team played Finland in Jutland, which is the big part of Denmark that is connected to Germany. I met Mille, Carlos (our U19 defensive coordinator and Senior defensive man), Nicholas (U19 Head Coach) and Patrick (the Senior team RB coach). We all shoved into the car and made the roughly 2 hour drive to Vejle. It was funny because the drive was like the longest thing possible for these guys as it is basically a cross country journey!  The coolest part of the ride was passing into Funen from Zealand on this huge, long bridge. It was neat because you could see it approaching in the distance. Also it was like higher than anything I've seen since I've been here. We drove through the Danish countryside which smelled extremely awful. It was like someone stepping in cow poop and left their shoe outside in the sun, then wore it. I had no idea what the smell was until someone said something. Either that, or someone farted and played a joke on the American and blamed it on the Danish countryside. When we got there, we met the coaches briefly at the hotel and left Patrick and Nicholas because they were filming the game, and Mille, Carlos, and I explored Veijle. It's completely different than where I am living. Copenhagen is this huge city with absolutely zero elevation. I haven't seen one street that goes up a hill, or really any hills for that matter. In Vejle, driving to the field, we were going up a huge hill and it was wild for everyone to see a hill. They were joking that the car isn't made for hills. We also walked around for a while, and it was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, but there weren't that many people around. I guess I'm just used to seeing a ton of people everywhere I go. It was a nice town and a different pace than here in Copenhagen, and I'm glad I got to see Jutland.

The game was held at the Razorbacks home field, which is the team we have played in the Mermaid Bowl the last three years. Side note, I met a few of their players through Kim, and they are some good guys, I look forward to playing against, especially since we have them at home. Also, the weird thing is that the field was only 90 yards because it was on a soccer field that isn't long enough I guess. We were sitting at the 50 yard line and I was looking at it like, wow, the 40 is close to the 50, then it just hit me. I think it was kind of weird to host a game of that magnitude on a 90 yard field. The winner of the game has the opportunity to travel to Spain and play in the European championship. The game started off all in Denmark's favor, and it seemed that Finland just wouldn't be able to keep up. The offense was moving and the defense was solid. The score was 17-0 at half, with some big plays by our Gold Digger defensive lineman. The second half was a little rockier for the Red and White as Finland made it close by having a couple big plays and scoring a touchdown to make it 17-7. Later in the second half, some unlucky play calling led to a fumble and a TD for Finland to cut the lead to 17-14. The fans were on edge, but not out of hope for the team, as we still had the lead. In the 4th quarter, Denmark kicked a field goal to make it 20-14 with about 1:30 left. Great kickoff coverage led to Finland on about their 30, with 50 yards to the endzone. An early holding penalty moved them back, and some great pressure by the defense had the QB running for his life as he took a sack on about the 2 yard line. It was 3rd and forever with one play left. Finland was ready to go, but the relentless maniacs on the Danish defense clamped down on the QB and ended with game with a big play. That's they way I remember it and its possible things didn't go down that way. I was standing up enjoying every moment of the game. I have very minimal connection to the Danish National Team, but it was great to see the guys I know and coach play so well and lead their team to Victory. Everyone of them had some kind of role for the team, and all preformed fantastically. Hopefully they are ready to come back to practice and play some Danish League games and not look into the future too far.

I got home around 1 I guess, and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was asleep. Today has been a pretty typical lazy Sunday for me. I did some laundry, ate some food, and that's about it. I'm excited to get this week started and get the opportunity to go to play in England. If we win again, we will advance to play the London Blitz, who have already won their group!

Lastly, shout out to my old carpool buddy! Josh Welch proposed to his much, much better half Kristin Buck on Saturday. Much congratulations to both of them!