On the first day of school, Wedderburn said, he went to class for the first time in three years. Wedderburn, a freshman on the soccer team, is originally from England, where he played youth soccer with West Bromwich Albion since he was 12.
“I didn’t go to class at all,” Wedderburn said. “It was literally just football all the time, football 24/7. It was like a job, so to speak. Whereas here you do class in the morning and then come down and train, and you’ve got homework afterwards, whereas back home it was just football.”
When he arrived in Bloomington, not only did he have to adjust to new teammates, a new culture and a new country, Wedderburn also had to adjust to a new daily schedule.
Wedderburn also had to undergo a transition on the field, both mentally and physically. Seemingly, this would be the one place he would naturally fit in, but the style, the process and his role have changed from what they were in England.
In college soccer, the preseason is shorter. At West Brom, Wedderburn said he had six weeks of preseason training. The Hoosiers on the other hand only have a couple weeks between the first practice and the first official game of the season.
“You go there not as fit and you train to get fit, whereas here you’re meant to come in fit,” Wedderburn said of preseason training at West Brom. “Adapting to that was difficult, but now I feel like I’m at a good place so I’m ready to play.”
Wedderburn has only gotten to that good place where he’s ready to play recently, he said. He got his first regular season action Sept. 13 at Penn State, and while it was only a 12-minute appearance, both he and IU Coach Todd Yeagley said they liked how the debut went.
Wedderburn also played 18 minutes and recorded his first shot of his career in IU’s 4-1 loss against Rutgers on Sunday.
Yeagley said Wedderburn was involved at his natural position on the wing, which does not always come easily to a freshman playing his first game.
“I don’t care what level you’ve played at, it’s your first college game,” Yeagley said. “You’re not usually subbing in like that in the culture he’s in, so that’s an adjustment.”
At West Brom, Wedderburn was a permanent fixture on the wing and played full matches — or close to it — every time he stepped on the field. At IU, this is not possible for a variety of reasons.
The first is Wedderburn is still not fit enough to play a full match, he said. The Hoosiers also have played the same starting lineup in each of their five matches this season, so there was not exactly a place for Wedderburn to play in the starting lineup.
Even the act of him entering the game as a sub shows a stylistic difference between college soccer and the style he grew up playing. In the England youth system, subs are limited, as in professional soccer. In college soccer, players are allowed to exit and enter the game as often as the coach desires.
“Back home it’s a great tempo, but sometimes it might die off,” Wedderburn said. “Whereas here, because you can make subs at any time during the game, it’s a very high tempo at all times.”
Through all the change and adjustments he’s been forced to make in his short time in the United States, one thing has remained constant — the feeling of freedom he said comes from playing on the wing.
“Just running down the wings is the best feeling,” Wedderburn said. “You can cut in and shoot, go down and get across and then if you get an assist or a goal, it’s the best feeling.”
