Columnist Cristyn Enea: Tie was sweeter than wine

Cristyn Enea

Wednesday, May 29, 2002 | 8:53 a.m.

Editor's note: The UNLV women's soccer team is on an 11-day, 10-night European tour that includes games against teams from Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Cristyn Enea, a senior midfielder and communications major who earned second team all-Mountain West Conference honors last season, has agreed to provide the Sun with updates on the tour.

AHRWEILER, Germany -- So much for the importance of pre-game meals.

We spent Tuesday taking a beautiful cruise up the Rhine River, passing a number of nice hotels and fancy homes before stopping for a wine-tasting tour at a winery called Windzer Genossenschaft. We got to go down into the wine cellar and see all the big barrels of wine and how they produce it. Afterward, a lot of the players and people in our traveling party picked up a few bottles to bring back home.

We barely had time to grab a pre-game meal before playing a German club team called SC 07 Bad Neuenahr, probably the best team we've faced since we got here. They had five players from the German National team on their squad and were very good. But we managed to overcome a 3-1 deficit in the final 20 minutes of the second half to pull out a 3-3 tie against them.

Melicia Wright scored our first goal on a breakaway to put us up 1-0 in the first half. Bad Neuenahr scored the next three goals to take a 3-1 lead. But I scored on a free kick just outside the 18-yard line with about 20 minutes to go to cut the deficit to 3-2. Then Blynnda Bascones from Bonanza High converted on a breakaway with about 10 minutes to go to tie it.

Needless to say, that made for a much nicer bus trip back to our hotel in Belgium afterward. Everyone was very upbeat. Considering we had been wine-tasting just two hours before the game and had to gobble down our dinner about an hour before the game started, it was kind of surprising that we played our best game of the tour so far.

We're now 0-2-1 on the trip and play our final game tonight against a Belgium team. But we plan to spend the day doing plenty of shopping beforehand. Hopefully that will get us as prepared to play as the wine-tasting tour did (smile).