Nikki Labuda Czaplicki's Senior Season Blog
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Hi, Niner Nation. This is Nikki Labuda Czaplicki of the women's soccer team. I am starting a blog to talk about what is going on with the women's soccer team at Charlotte.
First a little background on me. I am a fifth-year senior and I am now attending graduate school for Mathematical Finance. I injured my knee last year against Arizona State and red shirted. I got married in June to my husband Andy who is currently training for the army in Fort Benning, Georgia. Needless to say I am not the typical college athlete. I am going to be facing some different challenges than the rest of my teammates. I ended up injuring both of my knees in the course of the past year so I will be playing through the pain this season until I can have surgery which would end my career if I had it now. I am also not going to see my husband too much through the course of the season. While he is in Georgia I will get to see him on the weekends if we have home games. However, at the end of September he goes to Missouri for six months. So during that time we will be limited to phone calls which I can tell you is very difficult.
Now time for soccer. This season is a little bit different from previous seasons. We have a very strong schedule early on which will be a great challenge for us. I don't think I have played so many quality teams in the one season.
After a very long preseason (almost three weeks) we opened our season at Fetzer Field against #2 North Carolina. They are a very tough opponent but we were really looking forward to the challenge of playing them. We left for Chapel Hill on wednesday, two days before the game, to get settled in. That night we went to dinner at 411. The food was awesome and we had a lot of fun. Thursday night we went to Katie Hadley's house for a cook out. Again awesome food and great times just hanging out with the team. The Hadley's were great hosts and their dog was really cute.
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North Carolina proved a challenge but one that we rose to and handled pretty well for being our first game of the season. We fought hard and played well and in the run of play only gave up two goals. However, we gave up many corner kicks and they scored on three of them. Giving up set piece goals is not like our team at all and so that has been a focus for us since then.
Last Sunday was my birthday so my husband came up for the weekend to visit which was great. I love getting to spend time with him even if its only for a day and a half. He and I really like to cook so we made birthday pies together and had the team over to my apartment for my birthday.
Our home opener was on Monday night against UNC Wilmington. It had rained hard for a couple hours before the game which ultimately delayed the game by about a half an hour. We came out a little slow and gave up an early goal. We tied it up but gave up another goal before halftime. The second half could not be described as beautiful soccer. It was a fight and a battle and because we were down we were just looking to get back a goal we played very direct. We played three freshmen up top, Oni Bernard, Macky Wingo and Jonna Handra who fought hard and ran harder and we were able to score two more goals and escape with a 3-2 win.
This week will be a tough week of training before our next game on Sunday, August 31 home against Tennessee Tech.
I hope to see you at this weekend's match. Until then GO NINERS!
