McDonnell Interns at Club Website, Meets Arsenal Goalkeeper while Studying in London

By Purnell T. Cropper | April 29, 2012

Team captain CJ McDonnell stays connected with players and leads by example by playing whenever possible in London. Read her story below.

Hey Coach,

I wanted to check in and catch you up on a few things. I saw the freshmen a few weeks ago on preview and we went to the Arsenal game then the following weekend I went to Barcelona and stayed with Sara and Kelley. I’ve been playing soccer about 2 times a week in this women’s kick around group. We play on a concrete pitch on Tuesday nights so it’s pretty fast passed and like indoor. I actually slipped on the ball trying to flick it on the other night and tore up my elbow, but it could’ve been much worse. On Sundays we play at one of the parks outside for a few hours and its a little more spread out. We’ve also done a few 5 a side tournaments which seem to be pretty popular here. I actually played in one with my company when I first got here as part of a sports marketing tournament and we got to meet the Arsenal goalkeeper, Wojciech Szczesny which is the Fast Track picture I sent.

I still really like the company I’m working with and they’ve just offered to let me stay on as a paid intern for the summer. At the moment I am planning on accepting, but I need to give them a date of when I expect to return to America. I was hoping to have at least a month in Chicago so I was wondering if you knew what day preseaon would be starting in the Fall so that I could plan around that.

Thanks,

CJ