Here is an update on the CAN-SWE and CAN-AUT games from a series of e-mails sent yesterday by Canadian Team Leader, Cathy Cadieux:

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We had a real BARNBURNER of a game this morning against Sweden.  They came out guns blazing and played their best game of the tournament.  Canada was up by only one at the start of the third quarter.  However, we had the possession arrow and went up by two.  Then a turnover gave us the ball and we held the ball until the last six seconds, scoring our final goal and posting a win of 34-31.

"Sweden is always a team to respect" said co-captain David Willsie.  "They played their best game of the tournament against us, and we expected nothing less."  Coach Soares went on to say "Sweden has a solid squad and they've been training hard and taking advantage of every possible pre-World's competition, just as Canada has.  It was a tough game, but with good discipline we eventually took control."

In our second game of the day, none of the starters played.  Playing most of the game were newbies Adam Frost (2.5) and Mike Whitehead (3.0) with vets Daryl Stubel (2.0) and Dany Bélanger (0.5).  It was a good experience for the newbies and our starters all got a good rest for tomorrow's game against the U.S.  If we win that one, we play Belgium in the crossover.  We'll win it.

"Our bench came out and did the job against Austria" said Head Coach, Joe Soares.  "Our goal in this game was to rest the starters and prepare for tomorrow's game against the USA."

As for the pending game against the USA this morning, High Performance Representative and Team Manager Marco Dispaltro (himself a national team athlete in wheelchair tennis) noted that "We're as ready as we can be" while co-captain Garett Hickling said that "We're going to take it to them."

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Pretty good forecasts, as it turned out, but the team is well aware of the impressive team from Belgium that they will have to beat tomorrow in order to make it to the gold medal game, and they are respecting the giant killers from Brussels.  This team takes it one game at a time, and it's formidable preparation and maturity holds it in good stead for tomorrow's semi-final game.  Immediately prior to the World Championships, we held an exhibition game against these same Belgians, but a playoff game is notably different from an exhibition game, which was comfortably won by Team Canada on May 27th.