Das Ankunft

Naturally before leaving Canada, my family was worried about how I would be picked up at the airport in Dusseldorf. They wondered whether my coach would recognize me, would he have a sign with my name on it like you see in the movies or would I just walk out and we would see each other and that was it. It wasn’t anything too exciting and realistically its probably best that way. I wasn’t expecting a sign since we had spoken on Skype so we both knew what we looked like and generally I don’t blend into crowds so I was most likely easy to recognize.

Some of you may be interested in knowing how I met my coach and how I heard about this organization or even football in Europe. I will explain the whole process later in another blog entry where I can explain how I ended up with the Monchengladbach Mavericks.

I pushed my cart out the arrivals door and I think the second face I saw was my coach’s. There was no drama, which was probably a good thing since I had no idea how many hours I had been awake, and all I knew was that it was 4pm in Germany and that this had been a very long day. Naturally, I was excited to finally meet my new coach face to face and get to know more about Monchengladbach but in reality my body just wanted somewhere to sleep and to continue the orientation 10 to 12 hours later when I felt awake.

Sometimes you get want you want and then the majority of the time you get something else. In this case, the rest of my first day in Germany was to swing by my new apartment, drop off my bags, grab a bite to eat (I was starving), and to go to the Mavericks practice.

During the 25-minute drive from Dusseldorf International Airport to Monchengladbach, my coach and our film specialist, who also picked me up at the airport, told me some of the history of Dusseldorf, about the Mavericks organization and about Monchengladbach the city or Gladbach as the locals call it. It was at this point that I also received a bit of a surprise; I wasn’t going to watch the practice, I was going to be participating as well.

Normally being told to participate in a practice isn’t a big deal; lace ‘em up and let’s go! This time however I was so tired, whether it was from the travel or a combination of the whole emotional rollercoaster and travel not too sure and it doesn’t matter my first practice for the Mavericks would be tonight whether I was “awake” for it or not.

After dropping off my bags and taking out my stuff for practice, we left for the Warsteiner Hockeypark. The Hockeypark is home to the Mavericks organization and now serves mostly for Mavericks football from the younger age groups up to the Senior Mavericks (my team) as well as some soccer and field hockey teams use it as well.

The Warsteiner Hockeypark was built for the Four Nations Field Hockey Tournament held in 2006. It has a capacity of 9000 spectators but during the Four Nations Tournament it held 14000 with the extra stands that were brought in. It is also used to host concerts when a stage is placed on the edge of one side and the field is also used as seating. This summer a few big artists from Germany and Europe will be appearing on stage at the Hockeypark, I hope to get to see at least one concert. A concert in a different language should be interesting. Check out the link to the Hockeypark website.

Here are a few pictures that I took of the Hockeypark.





Back to my first practice, I thought I may be walking into an “uppers practice” (players only wear helmets and shoulder pads, no heavy contact) but instead I was kind of but not really relieved to go to a conditioning practice. At least I knew I wasn’t going to be hit but instead my legs, which hadn’t really moved in many hours, were going to be pushed to their limit.

I wasn’t introduced to the team before practice so I showed up on the field did some stretching on my own, and tried to wake up and loosen my legs before the training would begin.

To shorten my recollection of the practice I will just say the practice ended with running about 40 flights of stairs. This was the hardest part of the practice for me since the players were calling out the number of flights of stairs left until the end of that set but in my very poor German all I understood was them counting down and then to my dismay the set would start over and the running would continue. Since I was the newest player and I did not want to be the guy asking when this hell was over, let alone attempting to do so in broken German, I kept quiet and just kept thinking of the bed that was awaiting me when the running was over.

At the end of the practice I was introduced to the rest of the team and coaching staff and was asked to say a few words; in my best-broken German, I tried to express my excitement to be joining the Monchengladbach Mavericks and to do my best to help our team reach our goal of winning a championship.