Die Reithalle

              Our winter break ended at the beginning of January, and it was time to begin our preseason for the second half of our season. After being in sunny Florida for 2 weeks, I returned to Germany January 12^th and was greeted by freezing rain and temperatures in the teens. The first few weeks we trained in the gym and did interval running outside. The weather was not conducive for soccer training outside, so we had to come up with another solution.

            There are not many indoor training facilities near our town, so instead we are training in the next best thing; die Reithalle, meaning riding hall. It basically looks like an indoor soccer field, except that the ground is a combination of sand and dirt instead of grass. Oh and the fact that there are nearly 40 horse stables lining the outside of the field. You can literally hear the sounds of horses neighing while we are playing.  

This is the inside of the Reithalle. 

The field is to the left and on the right are the horse stables. 

This is a close up of the ground. Those are footprints in the sand/dirt ground. 

Background

On January, 15 2011, I began my 20 hour journey to Cloppenburg, Germany where I would be playing professional soccer in the Women’s II Bundesliga. I had never been to Europe, I didn’t know a soul in Germany and I didn’t know a word of German. Luckily, I had three other Americans to share this adventure with. Our mission was simple: play the second half of the season for BV Cloppenburg and don’t get relegated from the second league. This sounded easy enough, except that our new team had lost nearly every game in the first half of the season. We would have to win or tie almost every game in order to ensure our spot in the second league for the next season. We only had a few weeks to prepare for the season and a lot to learn. Throughout the next four months we managed to win enough games to stay in the second league. At the end of the season my contract was renewed and would start my first complete season in a month.

            When I returned in July 2011 to begin my second season with BV Cloppenburg, we had a new mentality. Instead of fighting to stay afloat in the second league, we were going to try to advance into the first Bundelsiga. We had many new players join the team that helped transform our losing record into a winning one at the top of the table.

And now, almost a year later, we are faced with a similar dilemma. Win nearly every game in the second half of the season, or don’t advance into the first Bundlesliga.