I want to stay as active as I can while spending my 3 months in Germany. I am staying in Weilerswist with my husbands family. My husband and I met through soccer and it has always been a huge part of my life. Because of this I knew I wanted to try to play while I was in Germany. My husband played his whole life here and it was important to me to experience as much as I could during my stay.

His father was great with helping contact teams to see if any players were needed or if the opportunity for me to play was even possible. Luckily it was, the team VFL ERP, located about 10 minutes from Weilerswist in Erp was looking for players and were able to get me a temporary pass to play during the duration of me being here.

So far, I LOVE it! It is completely different than in the USA, here we practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7-8:30 and have games on Sunday. The games switch every weekend between home and away. In the USA there are no practices, there is only a game once a week and you play at the same location all the time with the teams interchanging.

I really enjoy that I am able to have practices during the week, it gives me more of a sense of pattern with language school during the day and then gym and practice at night. Another difference is that there are multiple leagues here in Germany. Where, in the USA there is basically just Mens, Womens and Coed. Here there are multiple men’s leagues depending on skill level, multiple women’s leagues depending on skill level and they do not play coed.

I started practicing with the team the first week that I got here, unfortunately I didn’t haven’t a players pass until recently so I wasn’t able to play in my first game here, but was able to play last week and it was great. The team had already played four games before I got here and two more since. I am so excited to continue to play and see how the rest of the season goes!