Throughout the winter and spring terms, I filled my afternoons with different sports, but I always tried to allot time for kicking around a ball with friends on snowless patches of turf or underneath a blazing sun. While these school-year efforts proved useful to maintain my touch and technique, the summer months have been a crucial part of the preparation for the upcoming season.

Early in the summer, I joined a talented group of soccer players who played with a club in my town. Combined with a few visits to the gym and some backyard juggling, I have done my best to improve and support the team. However, as every Groton soccer player would tell you, the most vital component of our success is our fitness. Every day, whether at a formal school practice or on my lonesome in the summer months, I consider it my duty to “feed the rat,” as we say. Although I was initially unfamiliar with this terminology, I soon became familiar with the sensation of an unforgiving “corner flag”—our sixty second sprints after practice—or the seventieth minute exhaustion in a close match. So while I enjoyed plenty of relaxation and rejuvenation this summer, my preparation for the upcoming season has been an elemental aspect of the last few months. And the rat has only just begun to eat.