The world champion U.S. women’s national team will travel to Australia for the inaugural Pacific Cup to be held from May 31 through June 11 in six stadiums located in Canberra, Sydney and Newcastle. The defending Olympic gold medal-winning U.S. team will use the eight-team tournament as part of its 2000 Olympic preparations. It will also serve as a dry run for the organizers of the Olympic women’s soccer tournament. The USA was placed in Pool A and will play host Australia, Japan and a first-ever meeting with Scotland in first round play. Scotland recently lost to the U.S. under-18 girls team, 2-0, at the Albena Cup in Bulgaria. 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup runner-up China heads Pool B along with New Zealand, Canada and North Korea. Six of the eight teams participated in the 1999 Women’s World Cup with only the Kiwis and Scotland not attending the historic women’s soccer festival. The 2000 Olympic Soccer Draw Ceremony will take place at the Sydney Town Hall at 11:00 a.m. local time on June 3, at which time the USA will find out who its first round opponents will be for the 2nd Olympic Women’s Soccer Tournament. Joining the USA at the Olympics are host Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Nigeria, Norway and Sweden. The USA will open the Pacific Cup on Wednesday, May 31 at Bruce Stadium — an Olympic venue — in the Australian capital of Canberra and then travels to Sydney to face Australia on Friday, June 2, at Sydney Football Stadium, site of the gold medal match for women’s soccer. The U.S. women then finish first round play with Scotland on Sunday, June 4, at Campbelltown Sports Stadium in Sydney. As in the Olympic tournament, the first and second place teams in the two groups will “cross-over” and face each other in the semifinals, to be held on Wednesday, June 7 at Breakers Stadium in Newcastle. The Pacific Cup gold medal and bronze medal matches will be held on Sunday, June 11, also at Breakers Stadium. Unlike the Olympics, when four teams are eliminated after the first round, the 3rd and 4th place group finishers at the Pacific Cup will also cross over to play a losers bracket semifinals, with the winners playing for 5th place and the losers playing for 7th. Confederation partners China and Japan, Canada and the USA, and Australia and New Zealand have been seeded in opposite pools. The U.S. team will depart for Australia on May 26. The tournament marks the second trip for the USA to Australia this year after a young U.S. squad won the Australia Cup last January. This will be the third trip Down Under for the U.S. women in their history. The Pacific Cup is a tournament that is managed and administrated by five core Pacific countries — Australia, USA, China, Canada and Japan. The tournament will be held every two years and hosted on a rotating basis by one of the core countries. The U.S. women have never lost to Japan, and in fact have allowed just one goal in the last nine matches while scoring 41, including 9-0 and 7-0 poundings in Women’s World Cup warm-up matches in 1999. The USA has had similar success against Australia, winning all 12 meetings between two teams, including a 3-1 victory to clinch the Australia Cup title last January as a U.S. team featuring a starting lineup with three 17-year-olds and an average age of 19.8 years beat the Matlidas, 3-1. The senior U.S. team has never faced European minnow Scotland, but like many emerging European women’s national teams, the Scots have made great strides in recent years. Following is a complete schedule for the 2000 Pacific Cup: