Thorns FC forward Tobin Heath has been busy lately. After opening the season in Portland, she left to join the U.S. Women’s National Team as they began their final preparations for the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup this summer in Canada.
In this special series, Heath will be checking in from the USWNT camp as they prepare for the tournament as well as provide insight during the team’s time in Canada.
With the team on a short break ahead of training next week in New York, we talk about her time training with the team, building chemistry ahead of the tournament, and THAT move she pulled against Mexico last week in the USWNT’s 5-1 win.
Question:
Let’s start from the beginning. You’ve been working your way back from a little bit of an injury. What’s the first couple of weeks of camp been like?
Tobin Heath:
“They’ve been great. My injury wasn’t very serious so I spent basically a week rehabbing and just taking care of that, and managing it so that it wouldn’t be a bigger problem than just a little tweak. But camp overall has been great, I think. We’re tidying up a few things and getting the details right. Just fine-tuning things, I guess you would say, and doing that on turf as well has been good, because obviously the tournament’s on turf. So overall I think our preparation has been pretty spot on for what we’re trying to do.”
Q:
Do you think that playing with the Thorns on turf kind of helps a little bit with that?
TH:
“Yeah. I’m fortunate. I mean, the whole NWSL almost is on turf, or the majority of teams are on turf. But having the quality of the turf that we have in Portland, I think, helps a lot. It doesn’t take as much out of you as some other turf fields do. So in that way I feel like my preparation was great when I was with the Thorns. I felt like I was just continuing to build and getting comfortable on that surface.”
Q:
You mentioned building. Because you’ve had a couple of friendlies now and you got to play, which we’ll talk more about in a second, but obviously you’re building up to peak during the World Cup. What’s the sense amongst the team in training right now?
TH:
“I think the team’s flying right now. I think we’re obviously in a good place. I think the players feel really great. The majority of all the players are healthy, so that’s great. I think physically we’re where we want to be and that obviously helps on the soccer side of things. I think this tournament is longer than any World Cup we’ve played in, so the depth—the fact that we have so much depth on our team is huge—and I think everybody is really going to play a huge role in the tournament. We’ve been spending a lot of time together so obviously you can feel that hype and that energy that’s kind of working around, getting us ready and now it’s just about feeling good and peaking as we go into the tournament.”
Q:
How do you start building that team chemistry together? Both on and off the field?
TH:
“I mean, it’s just one big huge family where you know everything about everyone all the time. But it’s a good group. I feel like we work well on the field and off the field. We’ve got so many strong personalities and talents, and it’s cool to see how it all works out and how everybody’s roles play out in a way that tries to make the team as successful as it could be. So I think in that way it doesn’t feel that much different.
I feel the only difference is kind of that intensity, like you said. The intensity is just a lot higher now because everybody knows what’s at stake. So we have a limited amount of practices left and you could tell that we’re giving everything, all of our energy, to these practices because we don’t want to waste a moment. Because we want to be the best that we can be when we have to do it.”
Q:
Have you had a chance to have any fun?
TH
[Laughs] “Of course! I mean, I would say on the field our performance and our preparation is pretty serious, but with the group we’ve got, there’s always an abundance of fun and laughs and craziness. That just kind of goes along with it. But I’d say on the fields it’s pretty down to business and serious, that’s for sure.”
Q:
Let’s talk about the friendly you just played this last weekend against Mexico. That was a big nice 5-1 win. But I think everybody, out of the whole game, everybody wanted to talk about your move to set up Abby Wambach for the header.
Was it the kind of thing that had you been practicing that or was it just one of those things that you did in the moment?
TH:
“It’s just part of our play and it’s something that I’ve done a bunch of times. Obviously not at that stage, and obviously it’s just great because a goal came out of it. I mean, any time that you can do something special to the defender but actually get something out of it, that’s the most important thing. So in that way, I think that was my favorite part about it. It was just great.”
Q:
What did Abby say to you when she ran over after the goal? Because she had this look on her face like, “Whaaaat?”
TH:
[Laughs.] “It was funny because we were warming up together because we both were on the bench and we were playing 5v2 with all the other subs and we were just messing around, and I pulled something really crazy off in the warm up. And we had to stop the warm up because we were just all like, ‘Oh, man. That was sick.’ Then it was funny because then in the game I did another trick type thing, and she just came over, and was like, ‘Are you serious? Warm up and now this?’ And we were just laughing about it because of what had happened earlier when we were warming up.”
Q:
Were you surprised by some of the response to the move? Because there was a lot of people on Twitter that were talking about it.
TH:
“Not so much. I mean, I was kind of like, “Oh, wow. People enjoyed that.” But for me it’s just what I love to do with the ball and how I express myself on the field. It was just special to be able to do it in a game because then you’re always messing around like that in practice. Even one of my teammates, Julie Johnston, after the game she just came out to me and was like, ‘Finally you were able to do that to an opponent not just to us in practice all the time.’ So that was kind of funny.”
Q:
But you’re still going to save some moves for the World Cup?
TH:
[Laughs] “Yeah. I mean, I’ve got a bunch of sick stuff still so hopefully those will come out.”
