Tarpley’s Thoughts

Growing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan my family and I would come into Chicago for events, but now I have the opportunity to live in this exciting city and play professional soccer.  This is my first week in the windy city and I am thoroughly enjoying it.  I love being close to the magnificent mile, exploring new places, and most importantly playing for the Red Stars, the new women’s professional soccer team.

We just got back from a week of pre-season in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  We were all looking forward to getting to Chicago, settling in and seeing what we have to look forward to in the next 6 months.  We have been doing a lot of fun things as a team. Every Wednesday night a few teammates cook dinner for everyone. This week a few of the players cooked spaghetti, salad and brownies with ice cream for dessert.  They set the bar pretty high! Our two Swedish players are cooking this week; even though, they cook for most of us on a regular basis! My roommate (Megan Rapinoe) and I have already reserved taco night when it is our turn. We are carpooling to practice using Zip Cars.  It has been fun to figure out how to navigate around the city with my teammates.  I’m not sure if I’m used to all the traffic, but I am really enjoying the city life. 

I feel very fortunate to be playing for the Red Stars.  They are a quality organization and I am excited for the opportunity to play at Toyota Park.  We have a very talented team and we have players from all over the world including Sweden, Brazil, England, and Australia.  It has been a really great experience getting to know the entire team, learning to communicate with the foreign players and seeing what great people and players we have involved with the Red Stars.  We play a very exciting style of soccer and I can’t wait to play our home opener on April 19^th at Toyota Park!  This is a dream come true for me to be playing in a professional soccer league in such a great city.  Please come out and support the Red Stars!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.