VARSITY ATHLETICS

October 05, 2007

Soccer's Bishara gets a kick out of her rookie season...

By Amy Bishara - Freshman Forward - Toledo, Ohio

I can't even begin to express how nervous I was the first day of preseason. I hated not knowing what to expect or where I stood among all the other players. I had no idea how college soccer would compare to my high school teams.

Despite my anxiety, the hard practices, and conditioning, I couldn’t be any happier with my decision to play on this team. I worried at first that because there were so many of us freshman and I thought we might end up bonding more with each other and not with the rest of the team.

One of the first girls I became friends with was Maddy [Madeline VanGunten] whose locker is next to mine who pulled out a toy mouse from her bag one day and said, "This is Gordon. He comes to all my games." This was definitely weird to me at first and worried me a little bit, but it in someway was an icebreaker and became an ongoing joke between Maddy and I for awhile, where we'd always discuss "Gordon" and no one would have any idea who we were talking about. The freshman definitely bonded, whether through Gordon or other means, but that in no way stopped the rest of the team from bonding with us as well. In fact, Gordon has become our team mascot and is our good luck charm that comes to every game we play. Strangely enough the games we've lost he hasn't been present at.

But anyways, that's what I love most about playing on a team, even if you don't have such bonding experiences, you learn to respect as well as gain respect the most from your teammates through the game. Thus far, the season has been so much fun. I love the formation we play, my teammates, and my coaches. I've always been a midfielder my entire life, so I've never really been a big goal scorer. But since I'm a forward this year, I've scored a couple goals, which has been very exciting for me.

We've been doing pretty well this year. Our first conference game was last weekend when we traveled to New York to play NYU. Flying and hanging out in NYC with my team, the boy's team, and the volleyball team was so much fun. We were dropped off in Times Square together and were allowed to tour the city on our own. It was so much fun. I personally have never flown anywhere to play a soccer game, so this was definitely a new experience for me. It sucked traveling and then losing, especially since this was our first conference game, but we all learned a lot from it. Our next conference game is homecoming, (Oct. 6th), when we'll play Brandeis. I think we're all really pumped, angry about our last game, and are going to come out super hard, because every single one of us really wants to win.

Posted by: Creg Jantz October 5, 2007 03:48 PM | Category: Women's Soccer

Posted by: cnj4 (Creg Jantz) October 5, 2007 03:48 PM | Comments (0) | Trackback