Women’s Tournament of Nations-Reece’s once in a lifetime experience!

I can’t believe I haven’t written about this yet! One of my favorite things that happened this summer was attending the women’s soccer tournament of nations at Sporting KC stadium!!Reece’s soccer team was very fortunate to be selected to walk out with the players to kick off the games! I’m not even sure she realized what a big deal that was at the time, but she does now! She just included this as her main story on her 3rd grade star of the week poster for school:There was A LOT of communication about this event prior to our arrival; when to arrive, what gate to be at, signed waivers, dress code rules – the girls had to wear Nike brand tennis shoes NO EXCEPTION (many girls had to go buy new shoes!), what they could bring with them, and no parents allowed to accompany them past the gate. These soccer people don’t mess around…it’s high security! The first game wasn’t until 3:15, but we had to have our girls there by 12:15! I was literally scared to death I was going to screw something up. I bet I read those emails 30 times!

The girls got the VIP tour of all the behind the scenes events of a professional soccer game. So lucky!Then they got changed into new soccer outfits that they got to take home…They had to practice this ‘walk out’ multiple times!

Meet Kayla, our team’s assistant coach. She is a die-hard soccer fan and player and she was LOVING being their chaperone for the day!Our girls were assigned to walk out with the players from Mexico first and Morgan caught some great pictures. We scaled a lot of railings and seats to get close enough!

Finally the main event that everyone was waiting for was the USA vs Japan game. The energy in the stadium was awesome. Morgan and I tried our best to scale the railings and seats again but it was really hard with a full crowd!Reece got paired up with Megan Rapinoe! She’s a star player on the US women’s national team. She’s awesome and has been listed as one of 10 nominees for FIFA’s 2018 The Best players!Again, I don’t think Reece actually realized at the time what a privilege this was!USA won the match 4-2 with a hat trick by Alex Morgan and a goal by Megan Rapinoe. Of course when we got home we watched it back and snapped a picture of Reece making her debut appearance on TV. Yay Reecie Cups!