Sophomore Year

Hello and welcome back to your weekly read. I hope you have all had a good summer! My summer home was relaxing however I must say that two weeks into being back, I wanted to be back In Tampa. Theres no particular reason for this, just an accumulation of weather, soccer, prices and chicks in yoga pants make it an overall better place to live.

For those of you who read my first post which was one year and 4,600 blog views ago, you would know that coming to Tampa I was very nervous. I didn't know what to expect and moving your entire life halfway across the world is a daunting prospect. I can honestly say now that it has been the best decision of my life. I know there are a few of my readers who are considering the US soccer scholarship route and to them I say do it, and don't look back!

If my family and friends were here with me, I would never return to London as they're the only thing about it I miss. Some people think that leaving would be so hard and they'd miss home but I really don't have time to. Im training twice a day with classes in-between, then on weekends I'm out. Before I know it I'm back for Christmas or summer break.

We all know that last year I was unable to participate in matches for my school, this is because I was not granted eligibility by the US clearing house 'NCAA'. Well I'm delighted to say I am now 100% cleared and ready to go!

We start our year with two pre-season games. The first tonight (Wednesday 15th) away at Florida Gulf Coast, and the second on Saturday 18th away at USF, both Division 1 schools. They will both be incredibly hard tests in front of a lot of people, but I truly believe with the team we have we can beat anyone.

We are only two days into pre-season and it feels like I've been here for weeks. 5:30am starts with evening practices and fitness tests. Which I am happy to say I have passed. The second of which I ran like a Kenyan; even though I didn't run over the summer, which makes me wonder how good of a long distance runner I could be if I trained. But thats something to think about if the NCAA decide to mess me about again. Because we do have a cross country team here at UT, but I think the soccer team actually runs more.

I shall post again on Sunday with the results of both games, and then hopefully this season I can upload some footage of games to give you guys a clearer image of the standard of soccer out here at college level.

Have a great week,

Thanks for reading,

Ty.