By Dr. Terry Schroeder, Westlake Village resident and head coach of the U.S. Olympic Water Polo Team, which has been practicing the past several months in Westlake Village and has many local residents as players.

Yesterday, we arrived in San Jose and went through processing with the Olympic Committee. As we were heading to outfitting, we ran into the USA Basketball team. Kobe Bryant actually came up to us and said hello and wished us good luck.

It was pretty cool for the guys. All the USA teams will come through San Jose for their processing on their way to Beijing.

Outfitting is quite a scene. The first thing that you do is to get a shopping cart and then give you a clipboard that has all of your sizes on it. Then you go station to station and pick up your goods. You try on everything to make sure you are getting the correct size.

Our guys are not shy, so before you know it, they are all prancing around in their underwear going station to station and picking up their gear. I have some great pictures that I will share at a later time.

The guys get a ton of stuff - really too much to use while you are at the games. Ralph Lauren and Nike were the big sponsors and then we get some gear from Speedo, too. It was like Christmas!

The reality of going back to the Olympic Games has definitely set in. It has been 16 years since I participating in the Games. I am very excited and all of the guys are feeling the excitement, too.

Ryan Bailey, one of our three-time Olympians, told me that when he woke up yesterday he felt some butterflies for the first time. We are close. It is a little like we are sitting on the launching pad and getting ready for take off. The countdown is very apparent now. "Liftoff" is less then two weeks away.

One of the biggest keys now is keeping everyone calm and confident at the same time. We don't want to be wasting a great deal of energy on nerves at this stage.

We need to keep our cool so that we can be totally ready when we hit the pool for our first game against China on Aug. 10. We trained once yesterday and will be in the water twice today before we leave tomorrow.

See you at the pool!

Coach

Wayne Bean is a supporter of the U.S. Men's Water Polo Team. He has been posting blog entries for Coach Schroeder while he is in Beijing.