I left Charlotte airport and arrived at JFK to meet up with the Region I ODP team. We got our travel gear and polos and warm “puffy” jackets with USA written on them, took a team picture, and then went through security. Prior to arriving at our gate, head coach Mike Singleton addressed the team noting that the blue we were all dressed in was appropriate as we were going to have to be a hard, defensive, blue collar team against some of the best youth national teams in the world. We were to make no mistake: being that we were the American team, everyone looked at us with a target on our backs. And while we have never trained together, everything we would do from this point forward would be as a unit, united as a team.
