Thursday, April 26, 2012

Elephants vs. Giants

Hey y'all!
Long time no post! It's been an absolutely crazy week and a half for us! First and foremost, we accompanied our friend Nate to the hospital on Monday to find out that he stretched his LCL and completely tore his ACL. He's out for the season and he will have to have surgery to repair his ligaments. To say that he and all of us were upset is an understatement. The team has been great about everything for him  . . . a knee brace, crutches, cases of drinks, and most importantly, lots of love! Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers for Nate! We appreciate them and I know he does too!

Alright, on to the game! We woke up at 4:30 on Sunday morning, made breakfast and coffee, finished packing, skyped our parents quickly, and headed to the airport! Our flight left on time (a miracle!), and while I slept the entire plane ride, Jordan enjoyed his Steve Jobs book! Once at the airport, we all hopped on a bus and enjoyed a 3 hour bus ride from Venice up to Bolzano. Bolzano is the northernmost city in Italy so as you can imagine, the scenery, climate, and buildings are very different than what we see down in Catania! Unfortunately for us, it rained the entire bus trip, and even into the beginning of the game. It was also quite cold - we could see the snow capped mountains in the distance! So crazy! Luckily for us, it was still absolutely gorgeous! The stadium has a great field surface (astroturf), a scoreboard, and it's nestled at the foot of the mountains surrounding it!






Before the game started, the team huddled up, and when they broke, they chanted 'PISTOLERO' for Nate who was sitting in the stands with his torn ACL, watching the game with me. Many of the players also wrote the number 1 (Nate's number) on their tape or arms to let him know that they were playing for him - seriously sweet, and really a symbol of how wonderful the members of the elephants are!  The first half of the game was a bit of a struggle! Since everything was wet, it made it very difficult to catch/hold on to the ball. The elephants went into the locker room at halftime trailing the giants 13 - 19. I would like to note that the two touchdowns that were on the scoreboard at this time were scored by my hubby! He had an excellent first half :)
After halftime, the elephants came out with a vengeance and ended up winning by a touchdown! Jordan went on to score one more touchdown, and he also kicked off for the elephants in the second half. This game was not without it's drama, however. 7 members of the elephants were hurt during the course of the game . . . Dario - torn ACL, Christian- torn ACL, Claudio - concussion, Pepe - ankle, Ciba - shoulder, and Renalto & Cipolla (I can't remember exactly what happened to them . . . too many injuries!!) Whew . . . what a crazy game! I'm happy that Jordan and Eric made it out unscathed!




After the game, the four of us headed to a pizzeria right down the street to hang out with some of the Giants players. Eric played for the Bolzano Giants 2 years ago (he won the superbowl with them!), so he had lots of friends on the team. The Giants also played the game with only two Americans because their quarterback had his jaw broken in 4 places in a previous game! Ouch! The two remaining American players were friends of Jordan & Nate's - they met while playing for Team USA in Austria this past summer! All of this allowed us to have an awesome time at the pizzeria, relaxing, laughing, and eating with old and new friends! After the pizzeria we followed the American players to a bar around the corner. It was really neat inside, but it was 'Latino night' so they weren't really playing our style of music haha. After about an hour, we were all really tired so we decided to call it a night and head back to our place for the night - one of Eric's former teammates was nice enough to let us stay at his apartment!


All of the Americans

Team USA friends - Nate, H2, Joran, & Tommy


 I'll save the rest of our adventures this weekend for the next blog post! Miss you all!

Ciao, Ciao

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