FISU Kazan: Jackie Tessier in Poland, part 2

Jackie Tessier continues her travels overseas preparing for the FISU games in Kazan with a few more days spent in Poland and another game under the belts of the women's soccer team, this time against one of the top women's teams.

Read on for the second entry of Jackie's diary,  a special Canada Day edition, as the Confederations Cup wraps up in South America!

July 1 -

Happy Canada Day everyone! I'm writing this at just past midnight making it officially Canada Day for me here in Raciborz, Poland. So proud to be representing my country, but on this day it's exceptionally special!

The starting lineup against Unia Raciborz, Tessier wearing #16

Since my last entry, we finished our stay in Wroclaw with a couple more sessions. A few of these were on the field, and a couple were video review meetings. Again, doing some excellent work as a group reviewing game tape and going through tactics so that when we get into a field session, we can apply what we've discussed right away into realistic situations.

We also did a little bit of team bonding and goal setting. In addition to coming together as athletes, we need to mesh well as a group, putting personalities together and creating an atmosphere in which we can succeed. So, for a little team bonding exercise, our head coach Liz Jepsen put her iTunes library on shuffle and we had to guess which song was playing. Very fun times! We then went on to some goal setting to make sure we are all on the same page in terms of what we expect from ourselves and one another. Very useful stuff!

We then travelled to our current hotel in Raciborz, being generously hosted by the Polish F. A. to face one of their top premier teams, Unia Raciborz. After the sessions we had, we were able to apply a lot more solid tactical play to this match, which we ended up tying 2-2. It was personally a strong game for me as I had the privilege of acting as captain (we haven't chosen final captains yet), going on to score twice, my first two goals for a national team!

Today, we had another field session, continuing to work on shape and tactics, and had an evening video session reviewing the game against Unia Raciborz. I am now all packed up in my hotel room and ready to leave at 2am for Berlin, then Moscow and finally Kazan at 11pm tonight. It is going to be a long night/day, but we could not be prouder to be representing our country on Canada Day!

Jackie Tessier

---

I spoke with Jackie just before she was heading off to Berlin and asked what it felt like to score her first goal for her country and she said that it felt "pretty great, but I didn't realize the importance of that goal in my life until later. At the time I was just happy to have done my job!"