Here’s how we do a tournament. Get up at 3:30 am, driving straight through to California, spend the day with daughter, son-in-law, and grandson, go to bed, get up early, pack a gallon Ziploc bag with various snack foods (all that’s allowed to be brought in), grab two bottle of water each, and head to the stadium for a 9:20 am game. Phew!
The first obstacle to negotiate after paying $30 for parking (and being sure to remember where you parked) is to hope you can get your items through almost TSA-level security. There aren’t many people there for the first games as you can tell from the almost empty stadium.
The sevens series began in Dubai back in November of 2021 and traveled to Malaga, Seville, Singapore, Vancouver, Toulouse, London, and finally LA, close enough for us to get to easily and combine with a grandson visit. Win-win. Not saying we wouldn’t have loved to watch in one or more of the other cities, but the cost of going to LA was much cheaper. 🙂
Although we should be rooting for the US team, my heart belongs to the Blitzboks of South Africa. Ever since starting to watch, I’ve loved their intensity and play although they unfortunately were rather flat at this tournament. Also unfortunately for both me and the team, my favorite player Selvyn Davids wasn’t in LA due to injury. Here they are getting ready to play Argentina.
One of the fun things about sevens rugby tournaments is that fans dress up in all sorts of costumes and everyone has a good time. We didn’t dress up and didn’t have any team paraphernalia but I fell into conversation with fans from South Africa. This woman apologized for how the team was playing, introduced me to her mom saying that I knew all about the team, let us wrap up in her flag for this shot, and then went off and bought me a small SA flag. That’s all part of the fun
Other than South Africa not doing well, the only downside was that my face got rather sunburned. After the games, we headed over to our daughter’s for a bit of family time and a drink before heading back to our AirBnB for the night. Were we ever ready to sleep and try to recover for Day 2.
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