Nothin' to beach about....

Grace was invited to play in a La Crosse Tourney against the legendary East Coast teams and we decided to add a day to each side of the play and take in some beach time as well.  The Tourney was heavily recruited, 35 big name schools like Harvard, Penn, etc.. and the conversations we overheard were a notch up from what we are accustomed to, but somethings were the same...namely the rain.  We missed the rain as we flew in but the fields did not, so the first practice was cancelled due to wet fields.  The rest of the tourney was fine however, if not just down right hot on the turf.  Standard pool play followed by a day of bracket play.  They played teams from Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. Grace put two into the net in the opening game and played strong through out the weekend.  They lost a tough match, due to a bad ref whistle on Saturday and ended up facing the same team for the Championship grudge match  that saw an opposing player go down with heat stroke.  It was a battle against the Atlanta team that went into a sudden death overtime....again a faulty ref whistle negated a self-goal fluke by the opposing goalie that essentially solidified Grace to Second place.  There was zero shame and we were all amazed and proud that they placed so high and played so strong against East coast teams.  Grace's first university contact came in before we boarded the plane out of town...overall just a really cool LaX experiences.  

The rest of the trip was pretty cool too. Flights into town were easy and the hotel was hip with a balcony view of the ocean that allowed us to watch near constant F-18A flights and dolphins.  We spent some time at the beach, crashing in the waves and catching rays.  Strolled the board walk and t-shirt/fudge strip and ate plenty of local favorites.  We drove up to Chic's beach to check that out, but ultimately stayed close to our hotel.  On the way out of town we spent some time in Norfolk downtown and appropriately toured the USS -Wisconsin battleship in what was essentially a ghost town of a downtown area.  Very nice, very clean, very devoid of people, and very eerie.  Our actual flights were a shitshow...standby flights, delayed flights, lost luggage, even got 'trapped' in the long term parking at 2 am trying to get home...all in the name of adventure.