Boston College Athletics
The Life of Kyle
February 09, 2003 | Men's Soccer
Feb. 9, 2003
Finally, it all began. Last Monday we had our first team meeting at Gillette Stadium. So many things were running through my mind: what the guys would be like, how would I fit in, how difficult the training would be. The strangest thing was walking into the locker room and seeing guys I had grown up idolizing, watching them play in World Cups and Olympic Games, and thinking that these guys are now my teammates. Then I turned around and saw my locker, with my name on it and my training gear inside with my new number 26 (not my favorite number, but I wasn't going to complain). I couldn't help but feel like I was a little kid on Christmas morning with my eyes lit up, overwhelmed with what was in front of me.
Soon after, reality set in. On Tuesday we began our preseason training: fitness and conditioning workouts every weekday morning and training sessions two afternoons a week. It is much different from the preseason training I had in college. We have almost three months of preseason before our first regular season game, so they really try not to kill us by running us into the ground.
Our morning conditioning workouts are definitely not easy, though. We spend an hour-and-a-half running through speed ladders, doing various jumping exercises with boxes, running while strapped into a harness with bungee cords attached to the wall, sprinting up stairs, and just about anything you could possibly think of that involves giant workout balls and tension bands. The workouts don't make you feel like you are going to keel over and die from exhaustion; they are the types of drills that make your legs sore for days and leave you riding the elevator instead of taking the stairs whenever possible.
The afternoon sessions have been pretty low key for the most part. The field players are usually off playing soccer tennis or small-sided games, while we goalkeepers are working on our handling, trying to get used to the new ball the league is using this year. After the first of these sessions, a bunch of the field players wanted to do some shooting, so I decided to step in goal. It was the first time I was in goal with the field players shooting, and I was anxious to perform well so that the guys would respect me.
It is such a difficult thing to gain respect for your playing abilities when you are a rookie or a young player stepping into a new environment, and it's even worse when you are a 5'10" goalkeeper competing with 6'5" guys like Adin Brown. But I felt like I held my own out there. There were a couple of balls that I could have possibly saved but didn't, and there were a couple of balls that I probably shouldn't have saved but did, so I was pretty happy with my performance.
This Sunday (Feb. 9) we leave for Brazil for two-and-a-half weeks to get outdoors and do some training and play some exhibition matches. I'm really looking forward to it from both a personal and soccer-playing standpoint. On the personal side, it will be good to spend a couple of weeks with the guys and make some better friends on the team. Don't get me wrong - the guys have been great to me so far, despite the fact that a couple of us rookies came back from training one morning to find our shoes and pant pockets filled with rice. On the soccer side, it will be great to step out on the field and do some more real training with the team as a whole.
I know it's going to be rough trying to survive two-a-day practices in the 80-90 degree heat and the altitude of Sao Paulo, but at this point I'd much rather be down there burning under the intense heat than trekking through the endless piles of snow currently covering Boston.
