Trivia answer: Obviously the Chinese did not use the traditional method of organizing countries alphabetically. Instead they counted the number of brush strokes in the first character of the symbol the Chinese used to identify a particular country. In our case there are 8 brush strokes. I am amazed how intricate the Chinese characters are. I was told the Chinese alphabet consists of more than 80,000 such symbols…heck how would you like to learn the “Chinese alphabet song?”

As I mentioned earlier, we opted out of our shooting practice and rested our legs. We pushed back film to 3:00 pm, so we had a little extra time to prepare. One would think having worked on these teams for the past 3 years we would have things under control, but coaches add new wrinkles every game, and since we get a film of every game our Olympic opponents play we literally have an edit library on each team. Every game is broken down and picked apart . With our group it seems as though every play is played and rewound…again and again. It is a never-ending process.

Honestly, knowing how important routines are to success while also understanding that these players are easily bored presents a unique challenge for us. We work hard to balance structure and creativity. An example of this would be our scout tape we show our team every game day. It is typically a 12-minute synopsis of our opponent and our game plan. Because we are in China the introduction to our film is always the same…

“Confucius Say” followed by a tagline which can be a thought provoking tidbit, a quote, or a bit of humor. For example, when we played Cuba in the Good Luck Beijing Tournament our tagline was “SMOKE CUBA”

Here is today’s food for thought…

Confucius Say…A Journey of a 1000-Miles Begins with a Single Step!

Our short-term goal tonight was simple…WIN! After spotting Czech 8 points off the tip we settled down and ended up blasting them 97-57.

We always end our edits stating our long term goal…Destination Gold!