The High School to College Transition

Senior Year- It's springtime. What does that mean? High school soccer season. By senior year you have already played for your school for three years. You are no longer that anxious freshman arriving 30 minutes early to tryouts only to realize you left your soccer ball in your moms SUV. By now you know the ropes. You are the alpha of the team and all the underclassman know your name. You know what to expect and you aren't afraid to flaunt it. You feel like a local celebrity sitting on the school stage in February for signing day while all the younger, aspiring college athletes look up at you in admiration hoping that they will be in your shoes within the upcoming years. You play almost every minute of every game the season is flying by. Then night rolls around. You walk across the field with your parents on each side of you and it hits you hard that although you will still be playing soccer next year, things are about to change drastically.

Freshman Year- You have spent all summer striving to accomplish your daily workouts given to you by your future coach the second you graduated. You aren't exactly sure what to expect, but you know that if you don't do the workouts things might not go well for you. Before you know it, it's August. All of the sudden you are the anxious freshman again, but instead of your mom dropping you off at your high school right down the road, you are dropped off in another city or state with all of your belongings and the expectation to live with someone you hardly know. You both wake up the next day with giddy hearts for the first day of preseason. A week later you are thrown on a bus traveling across the country with your new team. Within a month you look up and realize that all the hard work and daily practices or games have caused you to make 25 new best friends.

Although college soccer is a lot of hard work, especially in comparison to high school, the bond you make with you're team is ten times stronger. At the end of the day, you wouldn't want to be doing anything else with your college experience.

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