Susi Says: Spring Season Week 3

Note: Susanne Felder is a junior on the Kent State field hockey team and is working for the Athletic Communication department during the spring to fulfill a requirement of her communications degree. As part of this course, Susi will be doing a weekly blog to give fans an update on the field hockey team during the spring season.

Jan. 29:

This past Friday with still some sore legs we had another 7.15am conditioning workout session with Sean. The warm up was a little slower than usual, because the legs felt heavy and sore… We did some 100 yards, 40 yards and 15 yards sprints. Coach told us the best way to get rid of our sore muscles is to run.  I have to admit, my legs felt better the very next day!

Afterwards we moved on to the weight room. Back squats with a little more weight than in the previous week and some other exercises for the legs. After the warm up we worked on some basics, pushing, sweeping, hitting etc.

At the end of our first and short practice we split up the already small groups. One drill was a shooting drill with Larry and the other one was about hitting and receiving on the move.

First field hockey practice was over and once we left the field house it was still dark outside!

Outside on the turf we did a short warm up to prepare for today’s condition workout.. Sean said we do 100 yard sprints, we thought we might do a similar workout like past Friday. Nope, not at all… we ended up running 12x100 yards with 40 seconds of rest time. According to Sean we didn’t do a bad job, but there is space for improvement.

Today we lacked a little bit with our concentration while listening to Sean. We will do better tomorrow!

We started off this week fresh and with recovered legs. Like last week we were running the beep test, 30:15s. Everyone knew by now what to do and we weren’t as confused as last week. This helped the majority of us to improve. 

Guess what?! On Tuesday we finally started to play some field hockey!  We split our team in two groups. One group started practice at 6 am and the other group was allowed to “sleep in”. They were starting practice an hour later.

Wednesday was lifting the first part of the day. Since field hockey is not simply a leg sport, we also need to work on our arm strength, therefore, we had several arm exercises and bench press on our schedule.

Today we had another 7.15 am lifting and conditioning workout day. Started off with some agility and ended up with hang cleans in the weight room. 

Tomorrow I am in the group who gets to “sleep in” and start field hockey practice at 7am.

Have a good day!

Susi Says: First Week of Practice

Note: Susanne Felder is a junior on the Kent State field hockey team and is working for the Athletic Communication department during the spring to fulfill a requirement of her communications degree. As part of this course, Susi will be doing a weekly blog to give fans an update on the field hockey team during the spring season.

Jan. 22:

Tuesday we started off with a condition test to see on what level each of us is after break. Winter break is a time people definitively eat too much, but it is just too tempting being home and eating mom's food. Anyways, the condition test was a little bit different from the normal beep test. This version of the beep test is called 30:15s. We had three zones between the zero and 40-yard line. Everyone was a little bit confused because none of us has run this type of test before. According to our coaches it was really interesting and fun to watch us starting off this test. We all kept looking to the left and right so see what everyone else was doing, to make sure oneself was doing it right. Eventually we didn’t do that bad on the test. After this test we were able to check off day one on our workout schedule. Injured people had to do rehab, but after that, everyone was ready to start their classes.

Wednesday, 7.15am… everyone still has some happy legs. After a short warm-up, Sean showed us some exercises to improve our running style to become faster. Around 8am we started our first day of weight lifting for this spring semester. We did hang clean shrugs and back squats. Afterwards we did several things for our arms.

Wednesday night, we all met up at the Kent State Basketball game at 7pm in the M.A.C.C. During the first half of the game we noticed that everyone was feeling their legs from the workout in the morning a little bit. Every athlete of every team who had a GPA of 3.0 or above in the previous fall semester was there. At halftime we all had to walk on the basketball court to get honored for reaching a good GPA. Most of us went home afterwards to finish up some homework, to be able to not go to bed too late. We have to get up quite early, remember?

Thursday, 6:20 am… the alarm is going off and you start moving. That’s the moment you notice how sore you really are from the workout the morning before. Oh oh… make sure no one notices how sore you really are until you know how the others feel. Shortly before practice in the training room you already hear people talking about the parts of their body and what hurts the most. Good, you are not the only one! 

7:15am, practice starts with a short warm-up and some 5-yard and back sprints. After finishing those short sprints we moved on to some agility work. Sean set up some cones for us and made us run. We ran some nice M’s, E’s and O’s around the cones.
Now we moved on to the lifting part of the day. Sean was nice and planned a workout for the arms and gave our sore legs a little break. We were strengthening our arms with bench press, some dumb-bell exercises, band pulls and chin-up’s.

On Friday we will have another conditioning session at 7.15am, like everyday this week.

Looking back on our first week, I can say that our sore muscles are greeting everyone. Nonetheless, everyone worked hard and tried to ignore that they are sore. Keep it up girls! Next week we finally start with some field hockey.

Have a nice weekend!

Susi Says: The start of the spring semester

Note: Susanne Felder is a junior on the Kent State field hockey team and is working for the Athletics Communication department during the spring to fulfill a requirement of her communications degree. As part of this course, Susi will be doing a weekly blog to give fans an update on the field hockey team during the spring season.

Jan. 14: School started again and with it our spring season. After some welcome back hugs and chats about our winter breaks, we started with our first team meeting on Tuesday morning.

Coaches welcomed us back and updated us about some rules for this upcoming semester. Coach Wiler also congratulated us for having a team GPA above 3.4, one of our goals we set us for the previous fall season. We received our schedules for the whole season; thereby, we are able to organize ourselves to be able to manage school along with field hockey. Our first workout session is scheduled for Tuesday, January 20^th.

This semester we will have Emily as our athletic trainer. Coaches introduced her to the freshman. We were able to welcome a new team member, Carlotta Duckwitz from Germany.