Soccer 2005 Preseason Journal: Part 2
8/14/2005 12:00:00 AM | Soccer
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Alabama junior defender Emily Pitek will give her account of the Crimson Tide’s pre-season work in her diary each day leading up to the beginning of the season.
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To describe today’s practice, Dave Matthews said it best in his latest song, “You Might Die Trying.”
Today the team worked extremely hard. The morning began with running 12 120s (sprinting the entire length of the field). Fortunately, the sun was taking a siesta and there was a cool breeze blowing through Tuscaloosa. The squad was split into two groups. One group worked while the other waited and cheered. All but one person passed without any problem, which really shows the summer wasn’t just spent lounging around a pool.
This fitness test was all mental. Luckily, mental toughness was present today, at least for freshman Jessie Deegan, who almost could not believe it when I told her she only had nine more sprints left when she had already was feeling the effects from the previous three! I can’t forget to give a shout out to our three new goalkeepers, Kara Gudmens, Karen Lansden and Brittni Lally, trained by our new coaches Shanna Caldwell and Jerod Hall, who all passed their fitness test and endured a rigorous session of their own.
Our assistant coach, Katie Barnes, tested the team’s coordination with the assistance of two speed ladders. The veterans on the team, like seniors Cally Morrill and Leigh Alexander, had no problem maneuvering their way through the ladder.
After that came a technical session where we focused on receiving a pass with different surfaces of our feet and body. Then we played a 5-v-5-v-5 game. It started off slowly and then when everyone understood what was being asked of them, the drill became less structured and the team just started playing soccer and pinging the ball around. Barnes challenged us to pick up the intensity when we started to fall into a lull and the team responded well and finished the morning off on a positive note.
Then as a team we went over to our student union and collected all of our books, because after all, we are first students then soccer players! Lunch followed and then Coach generously gave us a few hours off before the night session.
In that break, a typical afternoon thunderstorm came to town, but decided to put half of campus underwater with massive amounts of rain upon its arrival. Senior captain Allison DeLisle was marooned at her house because there was water up to the doors of her SUV. The house of Jordan O’Banion, Susie Beard, Suzanne Baker, Gill Kilburn and Natalie Kohn experienced flooding of their own but they decided to wade through it.
Instead of the normal night scrimmage, Coach lined the team up and reminded us what it means to play at Alabama for the Crimson Tide. It is a school rich in tradition and it is hard to miss. Then he ran us, stretched us and made us do interesting things such as “Space-Ups,” or vertical push-ups. A few drills and a few sprints up the hill later, the evening session was over.
I am sure that at some point the team thought that they might in fact die trying to get through the fitness tests, morning session or
“weeble-wobbles”. Whatever the case, the entire team knows that like Bear Bryant once said, “The price of victory is high, but so are the rewards.”
Until later,
Emily Pitek
ROLL TIDE!
