Everyone had the morning off and we didn't meet up until 12:45pm at Manon's with our bikes. Then we were off on a bike ride to Keukenhof. Keukenhof, also known as "the garden of Europe" is one of the world's largest flower gardens. We spent a few hours walking around the gardens and looking at all the Tulips. We also saw some piglets and walked through a maze.
Our time at Keukenhof
We then biked back to Manon's parent's house where Manon's dad cooked us another delicious pasta dinner. The team were also introduced to a Dutch game called Sjoelen. Manon was the winner, much to Te's disappointment.
Sjoelen
Game 10: NZ v TOP - Post-Tournament
It was now time to play our final game of the tour. We biked to the TOP stadium where we got into our uniform for the last time and did our final warm-up as an u19 NZ team. Then, it was game time. We decided that for our last game we would play 3x 20 minute thirds. Our first two playing blocks would be as NZ v TOP, but then for the last 20 minutes we wanted to mix it all up and have an opportunity to play alongside dutch players and have a bit of fun. TOP started the game strongly with some very accurate shooting by their female players. All of their goals were Long-shots which is an indication of how well the dutch can shoot over here. Our second stanza was much improved, when we started to score some goals of our own. Half-way through, we had scored 4 goals to their 2! Bringing the game to a four point difference (10-6). The score was a lot closer and similarly to our game against Blauw-Wit, we knew we were playing no where near our true level of ability and potential. The final third was a lot more fun and by the end , everyone was laughing and smiling.
1st 20min score: 8-2 to TOP
2nd 20min score: 17-9 to TOP (9-7)
Points scored by: Alastair (1), Olivia (1), Michelle (1), Sam (2), Boris (4)
3rd 20min score: We stopped counting and just had fun.