Preseason Day Four - Sammy Sarett '12

(Sammy (center - striped shirt) with her teammates on a bus trip from the '09 season)

Today was our last day of preseason before classes start tomorrow. We practiced in the afternoon; it was cloudy and drizzling, great soccer weather. We focused on ball skills for the beginning of practice, moving on to a channel drill that rewarded creativity in attacking. It was a tough but overall fun end to our preseason.

After our practice today, we had a lifting session with the track coach. WE didn't actually lift, but he discussed with us the importance of building strength, power, and balance to our soccer skills. He gave us a quick but effective weightlifting workout, and took us through the exercises. It was a little like weightlifting for dummies, but I thought it was very helpful, even for the returning players, to see the correct techniques. And while I may not end the season buff, I can definitely feel a difference when I stick to the workouts.

We all know that we need to stay focused especially as we get into schoolwork. Still, I'm so excited for when we start our regular season games, and I know that the challenge of juggling soccer and school won't take away from the excitement.

Day Three - Soccer and Ice cream

by Becca Vaughan '12

Going into my third preseason was no different than the first two, waking up early and two-a-days in ninety degree weather. Today started with an upperclassmen practice since the new players were meeting their academic advisors. As usual, no upperclassmen practice can go without music provided by our team DJ, Kristina Vaci. We played games and ran relays and ended the light practice with our new stretching routine created by the track coach. Since there was a large break before our next practice, I did what most of the team did. I took a nap. I was told my freshman year that when I became a junior that my body would not bounce back as quickly as it used to. That was the truth; my body was sore and every tackle felt so much harder.

The second practice of the day shed some light on how the upcoming season was going to be. After completing drills and fitness we were finally able to have our first intersquad scrimmage, which I personally have been looking forward to since arriving on campus. The scrimmage gave us a glimpse of what is to come and allowed us to grow as a team before our first preseason scrimmage against Ashland University. By the end of practice we were all excited for what was to come during this season. The day ended with ice cream and a movie in the Village. We laughed as we watched She’s the Man and ate ice cream. Once the movie was done and the ice cream was gone we all headed back to our dorms for a good night’s rest before the scrimmage.

Now let the games begin!!!!!

Sophomores Deene Levey and Ashley Debeljak after a rough two-a-day.

Sophomore Amanda Wojahn and freshman Katie Dunn.

Day Two - a freshman's perspective :)

By Rachel Bourque '14

The best way to describe preseason is, nerves. No matter what we are doing I’ve been nervous, whether getting to fribley on time or practice on time to even synchronized swimming (wasn’t quite expecting that one) I’ve been nervous. It isn’t because the girls aren’t nice, because they are extremely nice, or that the coaches aren’t nice, because again they are, its just that every little single thing is new. The locker room is new the field is new the people are new the streets are new and the entire area is new. Let me just tell you that I’ve never had to wait to cross the street so much as I do here. In New Hampshire if I had to wait for two cars I would get frustrated, but that’s a whole other subject. So this morning was a surprise, all I really knew was that each grade had to make up its own synchronized swimming routine, I mean how hard is that?...very hard. I don’t know how those people do it, the very first thing we did (a very beautiful and obviously graceful sideways dive) I got nailed in the face underwater. But we kept right on going into our attempt to try to spell CWRUWS which I’m not sure if any of the other freshmen realized was backwards to the audience but again we kept going into a little dance us freshmen learned last night... which we failed miserably at again and last but not least our throw of Leah up in the air where she yells “FRESHMEN” which resulted in Leah basically doing a side flop yelling something that may have slightly sounded like fresh… But what we had that no other group had, that totally should have had us in first, was music, none the less Jason Mraz. But that was in the morning, I won’t go into too much about the afternoon, I’d rather not think about it too much. J All I’m going to say is that it was really hot, really sweaty, and included a lot of running, oh and I got a very nice nail mark in my arm, so maybe it was a little rough too.

Preseason 2010 - Day One Reflection

by Amanda Wojahn '12 from Centennial, Colorado (and returning to play after her second ACL surgery)

So its preseason time again and even though we’ve been through Case preseason before and countless others throughout high school, I think everyone is feeling the excitement and maybe a little angst. After last season’s successes and the goals we’ve set for ourselves and the team for the coming season I think everyone is especially ready to get back to playing and back to working hard. We spend all summer dreaming about getting back to soccer and training to get ready; so basically in the summer I think everyone’s only feeling the excitement. The funny thing about preseason is that it always manages to turn some of the excitement into anxiety and nerves. Recently I’ve been thinking about why we change like that. What I’ve gone through with my knee reminds me of how a lot of people treat preseason. There has been literally years of buildup to me getting back on the field and so much time spent in therapy and training, and a week before coming back to school I was feeling extremely nervous about what the doc was going to say, and what my play was going to be like, etc. It’s like I built it up so much in my head that I guess I was afraid that I could never reach the expectations I had been building up for the past year and a half. So here’s my realization…the one that it took me a year and a half to understand…that starting to play again, or preseason, or the beep test, or whatever it may be isn’t our ultimate goal, it only another part of the process. Same as each summer workout, same as each day spent in therapy, same as each game. I think it took me that long to see that because doctors and therapists always talk about returning to playing like you can mark a day on your calendar and on that day you’ll be totally back to normal. It’s not like we’re going to wake up one day and suddenly be ready. So I guess I just wanted to say that preseason is just part of the process, so whether you made the beep test or didn’t, or had a good practice or didn’t that it’s not end of the world, not even close. So I’ve made a little pact with myself to throw those silly expectations we subconsciously build up in our heads, make us feel anxious and nervous out the window, and just try to do my very best every day, every practice, every game, every time I touch the ball; because if being injured has taught me anything it’s that being able to play such a great game with such great teammates is truly a gift. Seriously, this is awesome, we get to go out everyday this week and play the game we all love for the whole day…what could be better?

Amanda (on far right) at last year's "Kicks for a Cause" game