Klagenfurt, Austria - Davenport Women's Basketball Coach Mark Youngs led a group of high school players and incoming freshman to the college level to Europe over the past two weeks for the second straight year and he was joined by Aquinas' Dave Hammer and Indiana Tech's Kirsta Solberg. 

Klagenfurt, Austria - Davenport Women's Basketball Coach Mark Youngs led a group of high school players and incoming freshman to the college level to Europe over the past two weeks for the second straight year and he was joined by Aquinas' Dave Hammer and Indiana Tech's Kirsta Solberg. 

Coach Youngs led last year's team to the gold medal and this year took seven student-athletes to Italy and Austria where they competed as Team USA (White) where they finished with the silver. Hammer and Solberg made their first trips as Hammer led his boys team to the gold medal and Solberg led the volleyball team to a bronze medal.

Team USA (white) had two future Panthers, Emily Nielsen (Marshall) and Lindsay Holmquist (Reed City) while five others joined them on the silver medal winning team - Lindsey Karpowicz (Grandville/Aquinas), Emily England (Goodrich HS), Amber Martin (Caledonia HS), Emily Williams (Canyon HS/Texas at Dallas) and Lyndsay LaCourse (Travers City St. Francis HS).

The team flew into Milan, Italy and spent two days in Milan, practicing and seeing the "fashion capital of Europe".  The group transferred to Venice, IT for a day and then to Klagenfurt, Austria for the 2009 United World Games.  The teams are divided into three and four team pools with the winner of each pool advancing to the medal round.

The first opponent for the USA (white) was the Czech Republic.  The team proved no match for Team USA as the Americans rolled to a 63-19 victory.  The second game was against Austria's "B" team.  USA (white) won 58-38 in that game and wrapped up first place in their pool. The first game in the medal round saw the Americans face off with Austria's 18-under National team.  The game was close throughout, but the Americans put on a big second half run to win the game 47-36. 

This set up a final with Team USA (blue), the other American team on the trip.  USA (blue) had outscored their four opponents by a combined 147 points, but the final wouldn't be a blow out by any means.  USA (white) fought off foul trouble throughout the entire first half (3 girls had 3 fouls in the first half) but still maintained a 24-23 lead at half time.  USA (white) led the entire second half until a 5-0 run by USA (blue) gave them a 43-40 lead with 1:51 to go.  A LaCourse field goal with a minute left cut the lead to one, and after a stop, USA (white) had a chance to win the game.  However a driving layup by Emily Nielsen and two missed free throws by Karpowicz prevented USA (white) from coming away with the gold medal.

USA (blue) won the game 46-42.  Free throws were the achilles heel for USA (white) as the team combined to shoot just 7-22 from the line in the gold medal game. One stat that stood out for the American team all week was balance, as all seven girls scored at least four points in every game that the team played.

Coach Dave Hammer's USA squad defeated Sweden 74-66 in the gold medal game to go 6-0 on the week. Until the gold medal game, the team's closest game was a 29 point victory over Serbia while Solberg's team defeated Finland for the bronze medal (25-18, 25-21) to finish with a record of 9 sets won and 3 sets lost on the week. USA's only losses were to gold medal winning Serbia (whom the split sets with) and silver medal winning Switzerland.