(I waited to post this, just in case some readers had recorded the Gold Medal game. By now, I think everyone knows the winner.)

Based on some things I have heard about the Olympic Team, I'm left to wonder if they might have been a factor in their own demise.  (By Olympic Team, I mean the entire organization, not just the players.)

I think they lost to Japan at least partly because they failed to properly prepare for the level of competition that they would face. The great majority of the games in their Bound for Beijing tour were against crappy teams, to put it bluntly. On the few occasions that they played serious competition, they often struggled. This was especially true when they faced very good pitchers.

What should they have done differently? Played better teams, with better pitching, of course. Where would that be? The NPF, naturally.

Sure, they played two NPF teams, and the NPF All-Star team twice. And in exactly half of those games, they were very close to losing. Sarah Pauly shut them out for 5 innings, and Team NPF came very close to beating them as well.

What if Team USA had played against the NPF teams all summer long? A 4-game series against each of the 6 teams would have been ideal. Every one of the 6 teams has a pitcher that would give them trouble. That means twice a week they would have faced a Burkhart, or a Tincher, or a Pauly, etc. Some teams even have 2 pitchers that would have a chance to beat them. The Glory had Desi pitching very well early in the season, and Mowatt at the end of the year. The Bandits have both Thorson and Sallinger, and of course the Force have WCWS runner up Megan Gibson. So half the time all 4 games of the series would have been possible losses for the Olympic Team.

It seems obvious that this would have been much better preparation for the Olympic games, so why didn't it happen? I heard that when the game against the Glory was being set up, there were demands made as to how big the stadium had to be. On one hand, I can see that they would want to accommodate the expected large number of fans. However, if the team plays 4 games at one place, the fans can be spread out over the series. Increased ticket prices should have been able to handle the money aspects of the deal. But I got the impression that the team would not agree to play in front of crowds (or venues) that were not at least a certain size, and this strikes me as arrogant. I don't think this came from the players (at least I hope not), so it must have come from whoever's in charge.

To be fair, I will admit that it's also possible that the NPF would not have agreed to such an arrangement, but something tells me that they were not the reason this didn't happen. Whatever the cause, the Olympic team was not tested more than a few times during their tour, and this definitely contributed to their loss in the Gold Medal game. And the reason they were not tested quite possibly rests within their own ranks.

As a possible silver lining, the loss increases the chance to get softball back in to the Olympics.