For me the 14th was the first day that I really went to the school, not just for visiting purposes. My football training started. We had to be there at 7, which for Spartans meant 6:55 dressed up in gear. Since the football training just started they just wanted to get us started into exercising again. For my teammates it was a 3 month summer break and for me it was the first time ever. I got there at about 6:40. I already knew where my locker was and soon one coach (Lowe) came in and gave me my stuff. The first day was just meeting, warming up and a little exercising of the things that we had talked about in the meeting. For me it was extremely hard to follow along, because not just football was new for me but also their specific words they used to express certain things. I pretty much just always went into the lines as 2nd or 3rd guy to see what the guy in front of me did and followed along. It was not even very exhausting and I swam after I got home. On the 2nd day I woke up with terrible sore hamstrings and glutes. The positions in which we were doing stuff were just completely new and my muscles were not used to it at all. The 2nd day was quite hard since I had sore legs and we didnt just play around like on the first day. The 3rd day was way better, my legs were starting to not just hurt anymore but I was actually able to follow along pretty good. The tactics and techniques were still very unusual for me. The 4th day was PADday. That means we got to put on pads. Pads to protect legs and knees and pads to protect the upper body and shoulders. From that day I realized how crazy some people were. Some people were going 50%, since it’s just a practice game, but some went 100% and were trying to hit people. The most craziest thing that day was that someone got a concussion and can’t play anymore for at least 3 weeks. The 4th day felt like it started to become a routine. Eventhough I was shocked that you wouldn’t get kicked out of the team if you were trying to box with other people. It turned out that 2 people got into a serious fight and people were trying to holding them back. For us in Germany you would have to immediately leave the team. They kept on practicing. The rest is pretty self explainetory. The following days were exhausting and many people quit already because it was too hard for them. We also had to practice on saturday and eventough I am not going into detail with sunday. It was churchday and therefore also quite exhausting and no oppertunity to sleep in.
Raphael USA 