Vegas!!

So,

I made it back to Colorado Springs yesterday, excited to be home, yet looking forward to three more weeks in Las Vegas starting on August 10th... My Birthday! This will be the third consecutive year I will spend my birthday somewhere other than my HOME... and NEXT year will be spent in Beijing! I am getting used to it!

Anyway, my trips were really awesome. I learned a whole bunch about teamwork from the U21 Women's team. This team went to France and Russia, and were the perfect example of a TEAM... They won the World Championship without having ONE PLAYER named to the All-Tournament Team! The group for this age (Born before 1986), won gold medals in each of the four Regional/World Tournaments... they finished UNDEFEATED in Competition Play... they LOST ONLY ONE GAME in FOUR YEARS!! Talk about domination! Talk about sheer madness! They were great people, too...

My trip to Washington, DC was not too bad. I was more of a support role for the two teams we had training there. One team was headed to the Pan Am Games in Brazil... the other was headed to Slovakia for the U19 Women's World Championships... The team in Brazil won the Gold Medal and the team in Slovakia is playing right now... good luck to those ladies!

In Washington, I went by Embassy Row, almost every day. It was cool to see all the different embassies... my fave was Croatia, because I have a great friend from there! :)

I went to Las Vegas next for the Men's Senior National Team training. It was quite a great time... We had 17 of the best players from the NBA working out in a "mini-camp" format. They practiced two days and played a scrimmage on the last day.

One of the fun things I got to do with this team was play "dummy zone defense" against our offense. I was with a group of the perimeter players (guards and small forwards), and my role was to defend the wing side... now, the "offense" consisted, on my side, of Kobe Bryant, Mike Miller, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant... I was instantly lit up for shots about every time the ball came that way.... Each time Kobe got the ball, he would say, "Ellis, you are too slow" or "you gotta get up on me"... it was funny! I tried my best to get there, but the guys were just shooting like it was no one's business... I had a good time, b/c even Carmelo would get on me to do my best! I did my best, under the circumstances, and I definitely won't win any awards for Defensive Player of the Year... It was fun!

Ok, well, I will report more from the 2nd Stop in Vegas real soon!