CORAL GABLES, Fla. – The captains of the University of Miami soccer team for the 2015 season are writing a blog for HurricaneSports.com this year called Captain’s Corner.

Named a captain just a few weeks ago, senior midfielder/defender Natalie Moik provided her first entry Wednesday. Moik, a native of Cologne, Germany, gives a look into the Hurricanes’ opening weekend of the 2015 regular season . . .

Hey Canes fans, thanks for reading again this week. Our season just started, but it is already safe to say that the weather has not been our best friend. As you already heard from Erin last week, both of our exhibition games got cut short due to weather. We were forced to start our regular season without having played a full 90-minute game, but we couldn’t have been more ready to step on the field together. After a good pregame practice on Thursday morning, our bus departed for Miami International Airport. This was the first official away trip for our freshmen, which is always exiting.

During the flight, a few of the passengers—*cough cough* Coach and Kate—were frightened due to the turbulence we experienced. We arrived in Charleston, went to a team dinner, and then spent the rest of the night at the hotel preparing for our game the next day.

Our first game was scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Friday. We began our day with a short and fun practice that got everyone focused and prepared for that night. Afterwards, we met in the meeting room of our hotel to go over some video and scouting report before we had some free time to relax. We departed the hotel for our pregame meal around 4:00 p.m. As we were finishing our food, Coach told us that our game was delayed due to weather once again. We had been in this situation before, so everyone knew what it meant and how to react.

Although we went back to the hotel, we stayed calm and positive, waiting for our coaches to update us for a new game time. Most of the team was gathered on the front porch of the hotel, when we received a text message from Coach: “Game is cancelled.” It was almost unbelievable that we were not able to play our third game in a row, but we had to deal with the situation and get ready for our next game, which was scheduled to be on Sunday. It seemed like there was a giant rain cloud following our every move.

Instead of a normal pregame practice on Saturday morning, our coaches took us downtown and we went on a team jog through the beautiful city of Charleston, right by the water. We had a lot of families in Charleston to support us, so a lot of the girls got the chance to spend some time with their families in the afternoon before we explored the city as a team before dinner. On Saturday evening we had planned to do a haunted house tour together as a team, but once again the weather stopped us from doing this team activity. The weather was a hero that day, as I do not like scary things :/

Another game day had come and finally the thunderstorms decided to take a break and let us play a whole game against Texas. Our energy had been accumulated from all the cancelled games and it reflected in the way we played. It was an intense game against a good team from Texas. Unfortunately, we fell short and lost 1-0, but we are able take a lot of positive things from our first full game of the season. It was great to see the team combine well and compete hard from the first to the last minute of the game.

We are now looking forward to our home opener against the University of Florida on Thursday at 7:00 p.m. We are excited and hope for lots of supporters at Cobb Stadium. Thank you for reading!