North Carolina State University Athletics
Mandela Schumacher-Hodge Checks in From Preseason Training
8/13/2005 12:00:00 AM | Women's Soccer
Aug. 13, 2005
RABUN GAP, Ga. - Hey everyone, this is Mandela (Schumacher-Hodge) coming to you from Rabun Gap, Georgia. We are leaving here tonight for Athens to prepare ourselves for the first exhibition match on Sunday. This has been a great four days in such a beautiful place. The people here at the school have been very nice and treated us well. The freshmen have done a tremendous job in finding their place amongst the returning players. I can tell they will help our attack this season and they are all midfielders and forwards.
Let me fill you in on what has taken place since Carol gave her journal the other day. She mentioned we had a task to bring family photos to our dinner on Thursday night. Well we did. The evening started when we shared photos of our families and took turns talking about our backgrounds. It was such a nice time learning about my teammates, coaches and staff as people outside of soccer.
We headed out to the field at 7:45 a.m. on Friday to stretch and prepare for practice. We started at 8 a.m. with an agility test where we ran 5 yards, cut back, ran 10 yards, cut back, ran 5 yards and cut back. We partnered up and timed one another. After that we worked on game situations, crossing and finishing, corner kicks and then began a 4 v 4 tournament. I am proud to say my team won. Aria (Tanzi), Christina (Mann) and Mallory (Schmidt) were on my team. After practice we stayed an extra 10 minutes to work on various skills to get game-ready. When the evening came around our task for this night was to prepare a skit and perform it in front of the team. We separated by class. The freshmen were definitely the funniest. They did a skit that made fun of Kerrigan's warm-up drills. My class's skit, the juniors, was not as funny. It was a lot of fun preparing it, but performing it was another story. Then a group of us stayed up later that evening chatting and thinking about the season and the team. We are all really looking forward to our game on Sunday.
Today, Saturday, we had a light training session in the morning. We worked on set plays, attacking and defensive situations, and angles on free kicks and played some games that forced us to work on crossing and finishing and ended the session with a 2 v 2 tournament. The freshmen had a chance to experience some of the fun games we have as part of skill and situation training. I think they had a lot of fun with it, I know I always do. It gets pretty competitive out there. We all stayed after practice again to work on different skills. After some lunch we hopped on the bus towards Athens, where our first preseason game awaits us on Sunday. I am looking forward to a nice hotel room, not that the dorm rooms were bad, but I guess it's just the thought of a big bed. I know we all had a great time in Rabun Gap. It was really beautiful and we definitely bonded and learned a lot about one another as players and as people.
We will take on the Georgia Bulldogs tomorrow afternoon before traveling back to Raleigh to get ready for school to start. Wish us luck.
