[U.S. WOMEN’S ROSTER] Swede Pia Sundhage called up seven collegians for her first camp since being named the U.S. women’s national team coach.
Yael Averbuch, Nikki Washington, Tobin Heath and Casey Nogueira of North Carolina, and Michelle Enyeart and Angie Woznuk (Portland) and Rachel Buehler (Stanford) are able to attend the four-day training camp, beginning Saturday at the Home Depot Center, because their teams were eliminated from the NCAA Women’s Tournament.
Sundhage called in 16 players from the U.S. team that finished third at the 2007 Women’s World Cup in China. Also set to attend the camp is veteran defender Heather Mitts, who suffered an ACL tear in May missed out on the Women’s World Cup in China.
Sundhage’s coaching staff for the HDC camp includes Florida State’s Mark Krikorian and his former assistant Erica Walsh, now the head coach at Penn State. Like Sundhage, Krikorian is a former WUSA head coach.
The U.S. women are preparing for the CONCACAF Olympic qualifying tournament to held April 2-13 in Chihuahua, Mexico. Two countries from the six-team tournament will advance to China.
“It’s a short camp,” said Sundhage, “but it will be valuable time spent together as a team and a unique moment for me to have a chance to work with the best players in the United States for the first time. It will give us the chance to get to know them as players a little bit more, they’ll get the chance to learn my style and I’ll also get the chance to get to know them off the field. It will be a good start to something new.”
U.S. ROSTER:
GOALKEEPERS: Nicole Barnhart (Gilbertsville, Pa.), Briana Scurry (Dayton, Minn.), Hope Solo (Richland, Wash.);
DEFENDERS: Rachel Buehler (Del Mar, Calif.), Marian Dalmy (Lakewood, Colo.), Kate Markgraf (Bloomfield Hills, Mich.), Heather Mitts (Cincinnati, Ohio), Christie Rampone (Point Pleasant, N.J.), Cat Whitehill (Birmingham, Ala.);
MIDFIELDERS: Yael Averbuch (Upper Montclair, N.J.), Shannon Boxx (Redondo Beach, Calif.), Lori Chalupny (St. Louis, Mo.), Tobin Heath (Basking Ridge, N.J.), Carli Lloyd (Delran, N.J.), Leslie Osborne (Brookfield, Wis.), Aly Wagner (San Jose, Calif.), Nikki Washington (Mesquite, Texas), Angie Woznuk (El Cajon, Calif.);
FORWARDS: Michelle Enyeart (Hemet, Calif.), Natasha Kai (Kahuku, Hawaii), Casey Nogueira (Raleigh, N.C.), Heather O’Reilly (East Brunswick, N.J.), Lindsay Tarpley (Kalamazoo, Mich.), Abby Wambach (Rochester, N.Y.).