When athletes are interviewed, they are usually asked to comment on a game or team activity. But I rarely hear anything about an athlete’s daily schedule or how their sport affects the more mundane aspects of their life.
This week made me realize just how much soccer dictates my schedule, because I was turned upside-down. Normally, we have a game on Sunday, followed by a light recovery practice on Monday. Tuesday is our off-day and Wednesday is our hardest training day. Thursday is our game preparation day when we work on low-intensity drills, walk-throughs, and set pieces. Friday we have a game, Saturday we have a light recovery/preparation practice, and Sunday we play again.
But this week was different. We came off our hard-fought Crusader Classic weekend into an important conference game on Wednesday. WHAT!? Yea, you heard me right… Wednesday. And now this weekend we have no games at all. Instead of having an off day, on Tuesday we had practice in order to prepare for our Wednesday game. I was appalled to realize that my body has become so used to not training on Tuesday that my legs resisted the idea of running. It also cut into a big part of my usual scheduled catch-up-on-homework day, which has sort of put me behind on homework this whole week. On Wednesday we had to miss our afternoon classes in order to travel to Loyola, and then got home late, which affected both the amount of sleep we were able to get and the amount of homework and studying we were able to complete. Thursday was pretty much normal, except that I kept thinking that it was Monday. By the time Friday came, I was exhausted. I was anticipating having a social Friday night and was really excited for it, but by the time I actually got there, I just wanted to sleep. It was really weird to end classes on Friday and not have any practice or game that I had to play. Once classes ended on Friday, I felt like I was living in some sort of twilight zone. I could feel the weekend excitement in the air, but I kept thinking I had to do homework and prepare for class, which of course didn’t happen because my roommate so graciously lured me into her normal Friday procrastination/jam session/ get ready for activities routine.
Regardless, it is all worth it because we BEAT LOYOLA. It will be nice having Sunday off from practice as well and hopefully I can get caught up on homework so I will be raring to go for our game this Wednesday against Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
-Trisha Wladecki
What day is it again?
– October 1, 2011
I also want to comment on the great team pre-game meal we had. It didn’t quite fit in with the subject of my blog this week, but I would not want to give the impression that it wasn’t important and appreciated. The Gratziana’s had the entire team to their house for our pre-game meal. Yum yum yum. It was so nice to have good Italian antipasti, pasta, tomatoes, and other goodies. (The Union doesn’t quite compare.) Not only that, but they opened their house to us and let us use it as an entertainment center, training room, and locker room. I can speak for the whole team when I say that our stop at the Gratziana’s was good for the body and the soul.