Co-writen by Matthew Bailey
Hi, I am Tyler Buchan with China lacrosse. Its been a long journey for us, but our team has finally come together in Denver. It took some time to find a efficient way to break the communication barrier, as we all come from different parts of the world. As a majority of the team speaks mainly Mandarin and only a little bit of English, this was difficult at first to overcome.
However we were able to quickly find a solution for dealing with the language difference by utilizing the bilingual players on our team. Over the past few days there has been a lot of noticeable improvement in the players stick skills and knowledge of the game. We are very lucky to have a few experienced North American players with us to help influence the players who reside in China so they can better themselves and go back and help grow the game of lacrosse in their home country. After a few days of debate the coaches have come to an agreement on our team captains. The first is Zhang Ying (Daniel) who has been a big part in developing lacrosse in China from the very beginning. Next is Jon Bailey, a university student from BC, Canada, who has sacrificed a lot of his time over the past two summers by travelling to China to help develop the native players.
Our third captain is Harrison Zhu. He has shown great leadership since he has arrived here in Denver. Harrison is also one of our bilingual players who helps with communication and attends Colby university as one of their goaltenders. On Wednesday we faced off against team Argentina in a scrimmage for our first contest as a team. It was a hard fought game with Argentina coming out on top by a couple of goals.
Even though we lost we were all still happy with our efforts and were able to build from it. Our coaches Mike Elephante, Barton Wheeler and Gordon Muldoon were able identify the weak points in our play and help prepare us for a tough game on Friday against last tournaments 8th place Netherlands.
