Sport In short

Playing full-on football in the StatesFormer Mainland Pride captain Lily Alfeld has recently returned from her first season playing at college level in the United States, and caught up with reporter Andrew Voerman to talk about her experience so far

LILY ALFELD has been the welcome recipient of some good old-fashioned southern United States hospitality.

She has just come to the end of her first season playing soccer and studying at Louisiana State University, located in the city of Baton Rouge, home to about 220,000 people, where the average high barely drops below 17 deg C and the mercury gets up to 33 deg C and beyond in summer, a far cry from the Canterbury winters she is used to.

But in spite of the culture shock, she says the people in Louisiana have been extremely friendly and welcoming, making it easy for her to settle in.

Alfeld, 20, left New Zealand having won the Mainland Pre-mier League and ASB Womens Knockout Cup with Coastal Spirit, and the National Womens League with the Mainland Pride, as well as having represented her country at the 2010 and 2012 Under-17 World Cups.

On her way to the US, she went to Canada with the Junior Football Ferns to play in the Under-20 World Cup, where she played every minute of all four games, as New Zealand made it to the second round of the event for the first time.

That tournament was in August, the same month the US college soccer season starts, so Alfeld barely had a chance to catch her breath.

I got chucked in the deep end pretty quickly, she says.

I had one day off, then we had to go straight to training, and about five days later we had our first game.

That was against Troy University from the neighbouring state of Alabama, a game Alfeld, a goal-keeper, started, and which LSU won 2-0, meaning she recorded a clean sheet at the first time of asking.

She went on to make 15 more appearances last season, 13 of them starts, kept another three clean sheets, and made the fifth-most saves per game of any keeper in her teams competition, with 4.25.

I was very fortunate to be able to come in and play straight away usually as a freshman you dont usually get that right, but I was fortunate enough to be able to do that.

It wasnt all smooth sailing it

had a lot of ups and downs, but I learnt a lot.

The college soccer season is built around what is known as conference play.

There are 326 schools or pro-grammes that play at the highest level the National Collegiate Athletic Associations division one and to keep their schedules manageable, they are split into a series of conferences, largely along geographical lines.

LSU is a member of the South-eastern Conference, alongside universities from the states of Ala-bama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas among others.

There are 14 schools all up in the SEC, and in the regular season, they each play against 11 of the others, missing out on two every year. The top 10 sides from those games qualify for the single-elim-

ination SEC championship, with the winners of that tournament, as well as any other sides consid-ered good enough by a national committee, going on to contest the national, 64-team, single-elimination championship, for the College Cup.

Last season, LSU finished second to last in the SEC, winning just one game against their confer-ence rivals, and only five times out of 20 in all their games combined, missing out on any of the post-season action.

We had a pretty disappointing season, says Alfeld.

We didnt finish off like we had hoped; we were a very young team we had about nine incom-ing freshman, and three or four of us started, so it was quite hard. We had to go from none of us know-ing each other at all to playing with each other and it was quite difficult.

We had a lot of internationals which was great because theres a huge pool of talent but there was just so many styles of football.

I didnt realise how difficult it would be to gel us all together a couple of Mexicans, a few Canadi-ans, a couple of New Zealanders, a girl from England and then of course the Americans there were a lot of different styles trying to come together.

College soccer has a few dif-ferences from the game as Alfeld knew it growing up none of which threaten the integrity of the sport, but enough to make tradi-tionalists do a double take with every game that ends in a draw going to overtime, and coaches being allowed to make as many substitutions as they want the two most notable.

She says one of the best things about attending LSU is being part

of an environment where she is liv-ing and studying alongside dozens of other high-performing athletes.

As well as soccer, LSU has teams for baseball, basketball, golf, American football, gymnastics, softball, swimming, tennis, track and field, and volleyball, which means that there is a high concen-tration of talent on campus.

You sit in a class next to an Olympic athlete and you think wow, this is pretty cool.

Then there are the experiences on offer which she couldnt get at home.

American football is like reli-gion in many of the states that are home to schools in the SEC, and Louisiana is no exception.

The LSU Tigers are one of the best teams in the country na-tional champions in 2007 and runners-up in 2011 and play in front of crowds in excess of 100,000 at Tiger Stadium, which is located on campus, making it easy for Alfeld to attend games, which she says are unlike anything she has ever seen before.

I had the chance to go to maybe four of them they were just incredible, like nothing else. My parents were over for one of the games they loved it. I think we had 102,000 in the stadium. They always love it its always a packed house.

Its a phenomenon that means the term football has an entirely different meaning in the US than the one Alfeld is used to, which has caused some problems now that shes back in New Zealand, having just trained herself to call it soccer.

I always catch myself saying soccer and have to turn it back to football.

Alfeld may be enjoying her sum-mer break back home, but hasnt taken a break from playing. She returned to the field for Coastal last weekend, playing in goal as they beat Cashmere Technical 4-3 to advance to the quarter-finals of the ASB Womens Knockout Cup.

Shell return to Baton Rouge in the first week of August, and says she is well-placed to kick on in her sophomore season.

I think now I know what to ex-pect. Ill be able to focus more on my performance and getting back and playing well. Everythings not really as new and I can kind of get straight into it.

I think that will be my biggest help my knowledge and experi-ence of it now.

LSUs first game this season is on August 14, against Southern Mississippi, the start of a run of 20 in the space of 77 days, or one every four and Alfeld says the team believes this season is one where they have what it takes to be successful, and one where they need to be.

Were losing a lot of seniors after this fall, so we have high expectations of ourselves. If were going to do well, this is really our best opportunity. We want to get into the SEC tournament and then the NCAA tournament and do well in our conference.

CHAMPS: Alfeld with the National Womens League trophy as captain of the champion Mainland Pride team in 2013. Below: Alfeld watches as a ball rolls out for a goal kick during a club game in Auckland last year. PHOTOS: ENZO GIORDANI

Cantabrians Hannah Hegarty, Rebecca Lake, Lily Bray and Tahlia Herman-Watt have been selected for a New Zealand under-17 womens football team camp in Auckland next month.

Wednesday June 3 2015 The Star30 follow us on facebook.com/starcanterbury