ELEVATED EMOTIONS FOR GERMAN TEAM.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

The energy and electricity level dipped on Sunday. You knew it would, after the dizzying, convention-defying opening day of the Women's World Cup had Americans on either coast hyperventilating.

Emotions are like elevators, right? What goes up must come down.

Not necessarily. Eleven members of the German national team and four North Korean players would tell you that's a very bad analogy. On Sunday morning they got stuck in an Arcadia hotel lift and spent some 30 minutes in a mounting panic as condensation from their breath formed on the suffocating glass walls. ``The electricity broke down, the walls fogged up and it got very, very hot,'' said German goalkeeper Silke Rottenberg, who was one of the athletes trapped. ``Some of the players got very panicky.''

By comparison, the stifling pressure that the favored Germans faced from Italy in the first half of their opening-round match at the Rose Bowl was quite manageable. Rottenberg let in a header by Patrizia Panico that took a flukey bounce but was otherwise like a glass wall as the Germans and Italians played to a 1-1 draw.

Nigeria - the U.S. team's next opponent - defeated North Korea 2-1 in the other first-round match, in front of 17,102 spectators. You were left with the distinct feeling that the crowd, much more respectful than rowdy, was taking in the day's actions like deep breaths between fits of U.S.-fed hysteria.

Indeed, some of the denizens appeared as rooted to their seats as plants. Oh, wait, those were potted palms occupying a whole row of prime midfield seats.

To be sure, there were stretches when it was so quiet you could almost hear the photosynthesis taking place. As surely as those fronds were taking carbon dioxide and water and turning them into sugar in the afternoon sunlight, so were the faultfinders processing their sour soliloquies on female sports.

The Lakers draw more to a Phil Jackson press conference and all that.

You want to reply, oh, behave! After all, groovy lies in the eyes of the beholder.

``I liked the crowd,'' said German coach Tina Theune-Meyer. ``They were very fair and they were very excited.''

To German defender Steffi Jones, the crowd was large enough to grow goose pimples on her arms despite the 82-degree heat. Jones, the daughter of an American serviceman, said she was nervous making her debut on U.S. soil in front of so many people.

Jones is the kind of athlete jingo-istic sports radio hosts could learn to extol, if only they'd give her a chance. She'll pleasantly answer the most banal of questions and she even offered one journalist the shirt off her back in a gesture that underscored the real difference between male and female footballers.

The coaches, too, are not your ordinary Joe Gibbses. The Italian coach, Carlo Facchin, looks like Jud Hirsch and drives a point home like no coach you've heard in L.A. Not since Magic Johnson chased the erudite Paul Westhead away, anyway.

The manner in which Facchin dissected his team was the way you wished Larry Robinson had taken apart the 1998-99 Kings or Kurt Rambis, the 1999 Lakers. Davey Johnson ought to be so blunt about his Dodgers.

``We didn't express ourselves with the same creativity,'' Facchin said of the Italians, who lost their 1-0 lead in the 61st minute on a goal by Bettina Wiegmann. ``We lack courage. We're very strong, but we have defects. When we have more conviction of being a team, that's when we'll be a team.''

No stepping around the truth to spare any egos there.

That's OK. You can tell the women are tough. And not just because they have to be constantly reminded it's a good thing to fall when fouled.

You can tell they're not the coddling type because more than a dozen of them stood shoulder-to-shoulder, scared still as statues, for half an hour, their World Cup dreams and their lives, literally suspended, and survived not only to tell about it but to take the very next elevator.

``The hotel (staff) did everything to get them out and when the doors opened, (the players) laughed and got right back on an elevator,'' said Germany's Theune-Meyer, sounding bemused.

Rottenberg, the goalkeeper, could joke about it with a reporter. But she said she wasn't laughing at the time.

``I stayed relatively calm on the outside,'' she said. ``But inside I was not so calm.

``I learned something today,'' she added, and it wasn't that flukey goals like Panico's deflection happen.

``No more than six people at a time in the elevator.''