Aug. 20, 2007

DAYTON, Ohio - Senior Kristen Persichini helped lift Dayton to a 5-0 win against the London City Supernova on Saturday with her first goal of the preseason. The midfielder is keeping a journal during the women's soccer preseason as she shares some of the insights and challenges the team faces in preparation for 2007. She speaks further about the preseason training regimen in her second journal update.

Day 3: Wednesday, August 15, 2007
This morning we woke up at 7 a.m. and ate breakfast at KU. KU is the best place on campus to eat breakfast. After that we had practice from 9-10:30. It was still really hot today but our team is looking better and better each day. It seems like all the freshmen are really starting to fit in. After practice we went to VWK for lunch and then had another practice. We worked on finishing, which is usually a team favorite. Then we had dinner at VWK again. It is nice because we got to take a nap in between practice and dinner. After dinner we still had to lift. Since I was here the second half of the summer I already had maxed out on my bench and hang clean, but all the other girls had to get there maxes in. It seemed like everyone did a pretty good job. Two days of preseason already down.

Day 4: Thursday, August 16, 2007
Breakfast once again was at 7 a.m. and I tried not to eat as much because we had heard we had fitness in the morning, which we were not looking forward too. At practice at 9 a.m. we ran the six flag fitness. It was pretty tough but we knew we had to work hard because it was the only other fitness we were doing the rest of the week. Everyone did a pretty good job, I was impressed. It was such an improvement from last year because everyone is way more in shape and worked hard.

We had lunch and another practice later in the day. We played 2 v 2 which is a classic Dayton game. We play upperclassman verses underclassmen and it is really really competitive. It's a great way to get our level of play up. The underclassmen ended up winning which was a bummer, but we will get them next time. I am really enjoying preseason even though my legs are very tired. I have started to play forward at the coach's request, and I think everyone can tell I need lots of work, but that is what practice is for.

Stay tuned for preseason updates all this week on www.DaytonFlyers.com.