World Inline Hockey Championships: USA 9, Mexico 1

Alex DeYoung is a goaltender representing the United States with the Team USA Junior Men's Inline Hockey Team in the 2012 Fédération Internationale de Roller Sports (FIRS) World Championships in Bucaramanga, Colombia from June 30 to July 14.  Alex is a high school student in Northern Virginia, and the only member of the 16-player team from Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Area.  Over the next few weeks, he will be writing about the tournament from his perspective.

July 2 - Wow.  I was in front of my team leading them out of the locker room.  When we got down the ramp to the rink there were thousands of people in the arena.  We got on the rink and used our ten minute warm-up doing the Montreal drill and two-on-ones.

Carl Weedman and I split the game, each playing one of the 20-minute halves.  Carl (19), has been on Team USA for three years, with this being his final year of eligibility.  Carl told me how he was in the exact same situation as me three years ago.  He was the youngest player on the team, it was his first time playing for Team USA, and he was nervous like I was.  Right before I went on, he pulled me to the side and told me not to worry.  He said he was confident in my ability, and I would have no trouble if I played like I always do.

Alex DeYoung makes a blocker save

The first shot I faced was a wrist shot from the bottom of the right circle.  The puck was going in between my elbow and my rib cage and I snapped my elbow to my side.  This is the place I have the most trouble with, since it's always a tricky shot.  I couldn't tell at first if I had it or not, but I found it a few seconds later perfectly on the side of my chest pad.  With around seven minutes left in the game, Mexico was on a power play with two people screening me and our defensemen trying to move them.  Mexico's Luis Valencia took the puck through one of our forwards, then fired a snap-shot that deflected off our defenseman's shin pad and went in.

We scored nine goals in that game.  The goal scorers were Kenny Tenzca (3), Kyle DeVault, Anthony Corrao (2), Jess Hackett (2), and Sam Poyer.  [Read the badly-translated game recap here!, Tournament Stats here]

Tomorrow [July 3] we play Australia at 6:45.