LISBON — The full physical force of the first day of fall sports practice didn’t hit the defending Class C field hockey champions right away. The Lisbon Greyhounds didn’t need soreness and fatigue to strike immediately to be reminded that it was just the beginning of a long, grinding season.

Coach Julie Wescott flip-flopped the traditional morning conditioning practice to the early evening portion of their opening day double session because a handful of the 30 players in the program weren’t able to attend the early session. Instead, the Greyhounds began defense of their state title with a practice dedicated to fundamentals such as stick-handling, with a little bit of running and a few push-ups mixed in.

Monday marked the first day of practice for all fall sports teams across the state. With the season’s first countable games more than two weeks away for most sports (golf begins Aug. 30), athletes are getting a crash course on what the dog days of August are really about.

The Greyhounds open their title defense at home against Spruce Mountain on Sept. 6. They will prepare with a week of double sessions before school starts next week, then have another 12 days to get themselves physically and mentally ready for an arduous Mountain Valley Conference schedule that includes the team they beat in last year’s championship game, Winthrop.

Wescott has a veteran team that knows how important the pain and fatigue of the next two weeks is to its long-term success.

“If you work hard the first week it shows your potential. If you’re willing to work hard, that means you’re going to have a good season,” senior Nichole Jones said.

“Tonight we’ll probably be sore. But it gets better with time,” senior Hanna Jordan said.

“It’s a mental thing, too. You have to push,” senior Mariah Breton said. “You’re going to be sore and obviously doubles are hard, so mentally we have to push through it.”

The Greyhounds are a tight-knit group, with most of their nucleus, including 11 seniors, returning this season.

“Everyone’s excited and getting back into it,” senior Olivia Harrington said. “It helps that everyone is there and supporting everybody.”

The players didn’t exactly have to reintroduce themselves to each other or knock off a lot of rust on Monday. Many of them played in off-season leagues, tournaments and for travel teams this summer as close as Bates College and as far away as Cape Cod. Other than the mandatory two-week hands-off period that just ended, they had plenty of contact with their coach and each other.

“Playing together during the summer definitely helps. You can tell. By the time we get to preseason, we don’t have to figure out as much. We already have it figured out,” senior Bailey Cutler said.

“They know my expectations as a coach. It’s just how are you going to get your kids invested in the first week so that they’re going to get to their peak at the end of the season,” Wescott said. “We talk a little bit about goals at the beginning of the season, how important conditioning is, the fact that preseason is a lot about the mental side because of the heat. It is important to set the tone.”

Wescott set the tone at the first practice by letting the Greyhounds know it would be wrong for her to ask them to repeat their dream 2012 season in which they went unbeaten during the regular season, then avenged their MVC championship game loss to Winthrop in Orono. But she also wanted them to know what lies in store.

“You do your best every game and then we see where we end up. I’m not going to put that pressure of ‘Well, you have to go undefeated again and go win the state championship,'” Wescott said.

“I don’t want to scare them, but to constantly remind them ‘Look, you have a target on your back. You’re the defending champs, and who doesn’t want to beat the defending champs?'” she said.

The Greyhounds said they will have to lean on each other to keep the target moving.

“It’s kind of different just because we know that we have a target on our backs and there’s going to be a lot of pressure. But we’re just going to have to work past it and work together because we know we’re capable,” Cutler said.

“We’re not going to have any breaks. Every game is going to be a big game,” senior Jen Smith said. “We can’t play down to other teams. It’s going to be our level of field hockey all year.”

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