First Soccer Practice

At about 7:30 and I headed off to my first soccer practice! I met Jessica downstairs and we went to Guarini Campus. We were both pretty nervous. I was glad I wasn’t starting alone. We met up with a few of the girls and walked to the bus station with them. We made it to the soccer field and met with the coach. He had us all sign our names and numbers and all other info on a sheet of paper. Jessica and I looked at each other because we hadn’t exactly planned on staying on the team we were only there to see how it was going to go but we reluctantly wrote our names as well. Once everyone arrived we all headed down to the field. Coach told us to do a 10 minute warm-up run. We all started to run and all decided that a nice jog would be a good pace. I was pretty sure I was going to be dying soon, I hadn’t worked out since the end of cheer practice in December but 10 minutes went by relatively fast and we stopped to stretch. All of our bodies were steaming in the cold night air as we sat in a circle and got stretched out. The first thing he had us do was do a pyramid sprinting drill “3 rounds” he had said in a very thick Italian accent. After we had completed that we went onto passing drills. Jessie and I paired up and started to pass, it was interesting because neither of us had very good aim. After passing to just one we did lines and passed and then sprinted and finally we made a diamond and did a more complicated passing drill which I would definitely need more work on. After we completed those drills we went up to our smaller turf field and began work with a goal. He set up cones and we had to dribble the ball through them and shoot. This was an interesting experience but I actually only knocked over about 3 cones the whole drill. The next few drills were game situations and we spent the rest of practice trying to explain the game of soccer to Jessica and I. I think that it was a great choice to join. After practice, coach told us to meet at the field house at 8:30 for the game on Wednesday. I giggled a little again, because I really had no intentions on actually playing soccer, but here I was, part of the JCU Soccer Team!