Badgers in Tokyo: Phoebe Bacon just misses medal stand and Rose Lavelle and USWNT bow out in semifinals

There are 16 current or former Wisconsin Badgers in Tokyo for the 2020 Summer Olympics which, you know, are taking place in 2021. UWBadgers.com has a great master schedule and bios of all the UW Olympians right here, but we’ve collected a couple of the highlights for you because we love you and don’t want you to spend more time than necessary looking for this stuff.

• US midfielder Rose Lavelle scored the first goal of penalty kicks to help the Americans beat the Dutch 2-2 (4-3) in the quarterfinals of the women’s soccer tournament.

You may remember other performances by Lavelle against the Dutch like the 2019 World Cup Final. The USWNT plays Canada at 3 a.m. CT on Monday morning in the semis in a real CONCACAF blood bath in Tokyo. I started writing this on Saturday and due to some personal stuff I was unable to finish writing it until Monday and the USWNT lost to the Canadians early Monday morning, 1-0, on a questionable penalty call. Brutal defeat for the USWNT who, to be honest, didn’t appear to be playing at their best in Tokyo.

• Rising sophomore swimmer Phoebe Bacon swam a great race in the 200M backstroke but came up just short of the medal stand in her first ever Olympics.

After finishing second in her semifinals heat, Bacon finished write behind fellow American Rhyan White and one half of an Australian duo that won medals. Bacon won the national title in the 200M backstroke as a freshman and will look to continue her success next season.

• Canadian long distance runner Mohammed Ahmed finished sixth in the 10,000 meter with a personal season’s best time of 27:47.76, which put him just under four seconds off the bronze medal time.

Ahmed, and fellow Badger/Australian Morgan McDonald, will be racing in the 5000 meter qualification heats on Tuesday morning.

• American Kelsey Card finished 13th in her discus qualification group with a long throw of 56.04 which was not enough to qualify her for the finals. Her teammate Valerie Allman ended up winning the gold medal with a throw of 68.98 which is SUPER close to the nicest gold medal won in the whole Olympics.
• Member of the American women’s rugby sevens team Alev Kelter helped her team to the fifth place match against Australia, which the Americans ended up losing 17-7. I don’t know much about rugby, but it was certainly an exciting sport to watch.