Teams
Sixteen teams, the most ever, competed in the 2009 World Cup tournament. New entries include: Austria, Denmark, Haudenosaunee, Ireland, South Korea, and the Netherlands. The Haudenosaunee is the first team of women to represent the indigenous peoples of the Americas in the Women's World Cup. Lacrosse is seen as a sacred sport to the Iroquois and was traditionally a sport reserved for only men. In earlier tournaments, clan mothers protested the women's team playing the sacred sport and threatened to lay down on the field to prevent them from playing.
The tournament saw the return of defending gold medal winners Australia, as well as Canada, England, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Scotland, United States, Wales and the Czech Republic.
Teams were split into three separate pools. Pool A (Australia, United States, England, Canada, and Japan) and Pool B (Wales, Scotland, Czech Republic, Germany and New Zealand) played round robins games against each team in their pool seeding for the quarterfinals. Pool C (Austria, Denmark, Haudenosaunee, Ireland, Korea and Netherlands) played in two mini-pools ((I)& (II)) to determine who will advance to the next round of play. The quarterfinals were followed by consolation games, the semifinals, and the bronze and gold medal games.
Read more about this topic: 2009 FIL Women's World Cup
Famous quotes containing the word teams:
“A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)