Handball-it's not for wimps.

Today had been a beautiful day in Bjerringbro. Temperatures of nearly 8 degrees, and some weird shiny thing in the sky that Danes call 'The Sun.' It rarely appears in Denmark, but on the off chance this 'Sun' decides to show itself, it is only to cast a deceiving glow across frigid land.

But enough about the weather, let's get to the good stuff. Every Tuesday and Thursday we have "college' training, seperate from training with our respective teams, to balance out our practice schedules. These practices consist of 1 hour of physical training (cross-training using gymnastics, CrossFit, and body weight excercises on Tuesdays, traditional weight training on Thursdays) and 1 hour of personal handball skills including, but not limited to one-on-one moves; shooting; footwork; and personal defensive skills. These practices also give us U-16 and U-18 players to shoot on US National Team goalie Natascha King. This last Thursday focused quite a lot on shooting drills, and during the last five minutes of practice it was decided that the girls would practice penalty shots. Personally, I think I've got a pretty good shot-somewhere close to 10 years of water polo will do that for you. I love shooting around, over, and under defenders, as well using one-on-one moves to blow past them, but if you give me a big open goal with a goalie in front of it..we've got a problem. Handball is not a sport that you can spend hours an hours perfecting your shot to the top right corner, and expect the ball to go in when you shoot that corner in a game. (I learned that with the first practice penalty shot I took.) Handball, as I've mentioned before, is a game of opportunities, and therefore you must take the shot based on the opportunity you are given-not the shot you've practiced. Anyways, we lined up for penalty shots, and despite the fact that-had my ball continued- it would have been perfectly in the top right corner of the goal, but Natascha's hand was in the way. Bummer. We lined up for shots again, and this time I decided to pull out the big guns. Thanks to stickum (harpiks), I've figured a nasty way to move the ball in which my hand goes one way and sends the ball, with brutal force, in the opposite direction. It's useful when passing (to mess with a defender, especially in 5-1 defense) or shooting on a goalie (hand goes right-goalie goes right, ball goes left.) I lined up to take the shot and let'er rip. My hand went right, and the ball went left-unfortunately, so did Natascha. This time, however, her hand was not in the way-it was her face. Again, a picture is worth a thousand words...

I personally believe this photo does my damage no justice-she's got two black eyes and something we'll describe as a partially broken nose. Natascha refuses to take a picture with me, so a small amount of Facebook creeping (with her permission) will have to suffice. I'm torn between feeling bad for the amount of pain and inconvinience I caused Natascha, and, well, pride. I mean, c'mon, that ball had to have been going pretty damn fast.. I fully recant my previous statement to goalies.