Bird, LJ, and Donovan, all exhausted, made their way back to Seattle yesterday.

Anne said it was perfect playing Lauren in the finals, but tough watching her go down. "The only difficult and challenging part was, when Lauren was struggling during that gold-medal game, not being able to coach her a little bit. That was hard."

The Storm had hoped to bring in Suzy Batkovic for the post-Olympic run, but it didn't work out. "You're talking about a $30,000 contract verses a $300,000 contract [in France]," Donovan said. "I think it's going to come down to that -- unfortunately, because she could help us."

UPDATE: Laurent writes into say that the Seattle Times article is incorrect. Batkovic has signed to play not for Valenciennes but for Valencia in Spain. She also says that the salary is more like $100,000, and that's for 8 months of ball.