Ahead of Brown’s official preseason fitness test, the team gathered for a diagnostic version sans coaches. They hadn’t even started, but Layla Shell was sweating. The steely defensive center midfielder had just transferred from Tennessee and knew the stakes of the grueling tasks ahead would be even higher for a newcomer. Brown was getting ready to chase its fourth consecutive Ivy League title; the foundation of a player’s campaign for a starting position or leadership role can be built or broken in the length of a beep test.
But as Shell looked around at her new teammates, she sensed a different pre-test frenzy than the one she felt internally. Returning players embraced each other affectionately, appearing to pick up where they’d left off earlier that summer when they’d played soccer and folded pasta on a group trip to Italy, expressing what Shell felt was confounding excitement about the impending workout.
“I’m in my mind like, ‘We’re about to run a fitness test. Like, this is not gonna be fun. Why are people so excited?’” she told The Athletic. “I was so nervous, but that showed me how tight knit of a group it was and how much of a family it was.”
The roots of collegiate women’s soccer run deeper than any of its professional counterparts,…
