In his first ever collegiate soccer game on Rhodes Field, freshman forward Steven Baker scored two goals for the Quakers, though during the first half he wasn’t even on the field — let alone the sidelines.
He was in a classroom participating in the Penn Reading Project, a mandatory New Student Orientation event.
Baker and fellow Penn soccer players are often forced to choose between academics and athletics. And this balancing act takes full force when games are scheduled during the middle of the academic week.
“If we have a Wednesday night game and we have class all day Wednesday, when our classes end [we] have to switch gears and get focused for the game,” women’s soccer senior forward Kristen Kaiser said. “That brings a different perspective into the game and really does change things.”
“On midweek games you know that you’re going to go and play and then you’re going to go back and do homework,” fellow forward and junior Marin McDermott added.
More often than not, these midweek games are against local, non-Ivy opponents, which eases the transition into the weekend conference games ahead.
“You definitely have to try to bring the atmosphere that weekends just naturally entail so that you can fully prepare yourself for those weekend games,” McDermott said.
For both the men’s and women’s soccer teams, it isn’t difficult to schedule academics around athletics, as they try to leave the late afternoon and early evening hours available for practice time.
Not only do the underclassmen have a regimented schedule to which they adhere , they also have the guidance of their upperclassmen teammates as a resource.
“In the summer before they come in we always tell them if they have any questions about scheduling, feel free to ask us and pick our brains,” senior men’s soccer goalkeeper Ben Berg said. “There are a lot of guys that have been through it before, a lot of variety of majors, kids in Wharton [and] kids in engineering.”
Baker uses his fellow freshman teammate Jonny Dolezal as a resources as well. The two are enrolled in two of the same courses this semester. Although they sometimes find each other’s presence distracting, the two rookies try to spend their two-to-three days in mandatory study hall effectively in order to manage the burden.
Because the upperclassmen have years of experience in balancing athletic and the rigors of Penn academics, they are able to focus on overcoming the challenges that come with mentally preparing for games in the middle of the academic week.
“Balancing is not that hard. I get my sleep, I get my work done. It’s not complicated,” Dolezal said. “I took a lighter semester for my first fall semester just to get in the flow of things.”
