Golden at Grand Prix

By Beverly Oden, About.com

Over the past four weeks, the USA women's team has been overseas battling it out with some of the world's best for the privilege of calling themselves the Grand Prix champions. The gold hasn't been in American hands since 2001 and a win this year was unexpected.

But after a slow start, USA improved quickly over the course of the tournament, going 5-0 in the final round and beating gold medalists Brazil in a tight five set match. With great play from the MVP and Best Blocker of the tournament, Foluke Akinradewo and the Best Setter of the tournament in Alisha Glass, the Americans were able to take the title in tremendous fashion.

These women have shown that they are serious gold medal contenders for 2012. They are loaded with talent, deep in all the positions and they learn fast. But there is still work to do. The women's team is largely young - many of the players recently joined after finishing their college careers - so the learning curve will continue.

There are two long years left before they step onto the floor in London for the Olympic Games but this victory is an enormous one for this team. They did it by doing a number of things right, minimizing the things they did wrong and it didn't hurt to have just a little bit of luck.

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