Preseason - Day Five

by Kendra Simmons '13 (Medina, Ohio)

Preseason is over! After a full day with our soccer teammates for the sixth day in a row, we finally end the two-a-days, quick naps between sessions, and early breakfast dates. Now we move on to scrimmages, practices after class, and preparation for games! Today, we started the day with 8:00 breakfast (just like every day this week), then met in the locker room by 10:00 to start the team building activity, an exciting scavenger hunt. Since I am only a freshman, I was not lucky enough to experience last year’s scavenger hunt, but supposedly this year we completed it a little differently. Instead of having the activity center around fitness, we were allowed to have cars to make transportation easier. Because of the access to cars, the destinations on our extensive list of locations to find weremuch more vast. So basically, the entire Case women’s soccer team was frantically driving and running around all of Cleveland taking pictures of specific things (a vendor at the West Side Market, a “Greenie” driver, the oldest traffic light, Playhouse, Willard Park, The Science Center, Lebron’s huge poster, and various signs, buildings, and statues all the way from downtown Cleveland to Case’s campus). Since different pictures were worth different amounts of points, each group of five players figured out their own strategy and quickly drove away to find their first object (under the legal speed limit of course). My group, consisting of Sammy, Ana, Froms, and Selser, dodged buses, cars, and pedestrians to rapidly navigate through Cleveland. Unfortunately, with only 30 minutes left, Selser lost her wallet somewhere, so Ana, Sammy, and I were left to finish as much of the scavenger hunt as possible on foot. The three of us sprinted all around campus trying to gain as many last minute points as possible then hurried to make it back to the locker room by 12:00. All the other girls were completely dry and calm while Ana, Sammy, and I were dripping sweat and breathing heavily. I guess you could say we got just a little more fitness than the rest of the team. After Coach Taylor, Coach Tiff, and Coach Emily tallied up the scores and looked through the pictures, they decided on a winner. With 248 points, Yule’s team came out with the victory. After relaxing for some time, we headed to Leutner for lunch.

Three o’clock came around way too fast as we all found ourselves right back in the locker room ready for the second part of the day. We piled in the baseball stadium and listened to the AD give us a talk about drugs and things like that to look out for. After filling out some forms, we went to the field to start practice. We started with our usual warm up, then we did some “pre-practice” fitness. Everyone pushed themselves through several sets of sprints, then geared up to play 11 v 11. Since I am currently injured, I am able to watch everything from the side lines. Of course I would much rather be on the field, but since I’m not able to right now, it is great to see everyone improving in even a week. The other day, the forwards worked on their runs toward the ball while the midfield worked on distributing and making runs off of them. Even though we struggled at first when practicing that, everyone has already executed those runs and passes while scrimmaging. With this work rate and improvement, it looks like we could have a very successful season. Tomorrow we head to Denison for a scrimmage, and hopefully we can continue to think about everything we have learned so far and apply those things when playing against outside opponents.

(L to R): Devyn Lee '13, Maeve Goede '13, and Frannie Hogan '11