An Incredible Day

We just finished a really incredible day and are nearly at the end of our  WWC 2011 journey.

As many of you know, we had our final match of the tournament today.  Sweden v France for 3/4th place. As I've said on earlier posts, we are so proud to be select to officiate this match; the highest honor with USA in the final.  And to my knowledge the highest a FIFA referee man or women (and crew) from the USA has achieved to-date at a World Cup.

It all started with early breakfast, followed by 8:30am pre-game in the hotel in Frankfurt.  The 5 person referee crew then set out to Hieldelberg in order to arrive in plenty of time for the match, with rest relaxation and lunch at the hotel closest to the Stadium. We also got 5 minutes to see (from a great distance) our first and only castle we saw in our 33 days in Germany.

We were very fortunate to be heading back to Sinsheim, the place of our first match and also where we had last officiated France.  It felt like "our stadium" and we were thrilled that once again it was a sell-out crowd.  Nothing better than the comfort of "home".

Although not the best played match of the tournament we did our job, stayed concentrated and got the job done.  Kudos to Marlene and Veronica who called 10 correct offside decisions and made several more correct no calls.  As well as BIG props to Veronica for having great awareness, courage and conviction to correctly identify the contact between the French defender and Swedish forward; resulting in a very correct red card decision.

The 3rd place winner goes down in the history books.  Following the game they had a short ceremony which included the referee crew receiving medals for the game from the FIFA president, and president of the WWC.

We couldn't be more happy.  Sad our journey is nearly over, and happy that we had the honor of representing the USA at the highest level.

Now on to the final match of the tournament.  The best and final act we are hoping for is for Team USA to bring home the win.  GO USA