Lauren Horst, Class of 2015, captained the women’s team in the 2013-2014 season, leading them from the back in her position as center-back. Her crazy dance moves and superhuman strength showed on and off the field. Horst’s long-range shots from the halfway line and beyond are still notorious today. Horst majored in Literature and Creative Writing at NYU Abu Dhabi and is currently two years into her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

####What are three words that describe what the football team means to you? Convivial, light-hearted and generous. Convivial because we are supportive of each other and we genuinely cared about having fun more than achieving great results. Light-hearted because we are the opposite of self-serious. Generous because it has played a crucial role in my college life.

####How does football and the football team fit into your daily routine? I remember that when we made the transition from evening to morning practices with the move to Saadiyat Island, which was in my senior year, I felt pettily angry late at night when I would catch myself obsessing that ‘I have to be up in six hours and 45 minutes!’ and then be unable to fall asleep until 2:00 a.m. Fast forward to today, when I wake up at 6:00 a.m., and I know for a fact that the early morning practices are the best thing possible.

####What life lesson did the coaches teach you? I don’t know if I can package their life lessons into a single, awesome catchphrase. It was never about a pithy one-liner, it was a philosophy, an approach for life and football that really worked for me. It was never really about winning or losing. It was about sportsmanship, how we conduct ourselves, and about learning to take pride in what we’re doing.

####What’s your favorite football memory? I have a couple. Obviously, there’s the trips we were able to go on as a team. But the memories that really stick are the actions that were repeated, like coming back from an away game at 10:30 p.m. and ransacking the few counters of their dining hall that were still open. It was such a nice feeling to show up in the dining hall all dressed in the same uniform, cleats clacking on the floor, putting the pedal to the metal to get to the pizza guy and put your order in.

I think though, that my single favorite moment from my four years on the team was the Thursday morning I showed up for practice in the gym and found out that we were doing Zumba. I’ll never forget the sight of those athletes trying desperately to stay with the rhythm, especially the taller, more lanky guys on the men’s basketball team. It was a great way to phase in a fun co-ed interaction between the teams in a low-stakes environment. We were all filming each other and having such a good time. Did it make us better teams? Probably not, but it gave us a great chance to laugh at ourselves, which is crucial.

####What memories do the words ‘tradition’ and ‘community’ bring up? Tradition? Hindsight. You don’t know what the tradition is going to be before you’ve left the university and can see what stuck. For example, the women’s team used to bake together. I remember this one time we tried to bake brownies. Someone got the measurements all wrong and added a full mug of oil to a batter that only needed a quarter of a cup, and the brownies turned out absolutely disgusting! Still, despite how gross they turned out, or perhaps because of how much fun we had, it became a tradition for us to bake together. On a side note, the men’s team should do that too! They can start with bread, that’s a little more in the spirit of an athletics team. It’s such a great way to bond. You hijack a floor lounge, blast the music, and try not to get your baking project totally wrong.

Community? Strength.

####In the spirit of those word associations, what do you think when I say “Al Muna”? Small.

####Your coach? Warm-hearted.

####Post-game meals? Late. Oh, and sweaty!

####Captain? Unnecessary.

####ADISL? Still unclear what that acronym stands for.

####Interclassico? Embarrassing. People watch you.

####Game night? Hectic.

####Saadiyat Island campus? Palm trees.

####Saadiyat Island sport facilities? Exorbitant.

####Teammates? Cheery.

####How did you feel being asked to write the letter that was read before the 2016 Interclassico? It was hard and it was only a year later. I’ve always been a fan of the line of thinking that it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. I think it’s useful to hear before a game, just as it is useful to hear after a game, whether you win or lose. I’m not a very competitive person at all, so instead of telling the seniors to go crush the underclassmen, I wanted to tell them to go enjoy themselves, because that’s what really matters.

####Did you ever feel the urge to skip a couple practices, or to quit the team completely? Skip practice? I definitely wanted to sometimes! Especially as graduate school applications were due and we were frantically trying to sort out the next two to six years of our lives, I’m sure we all thought about taking a break. Still, I think I showed up to pretty much all the practices, because I had this strange sense of obligation and responsibility to the team.

As for quitting, never! Are you kidding? I could never leave my teammates, they mean too much to me. Also, the friendships I made through that team have lasted into my life after NYUAD. The team is the reason I keep in touch with a lot of the people who are here in New York now, and it’s the way I was introduced to a lot of wonderful people I never want to lose touch with.

####Since leaving NYUAD two years ago, you moved to the U.S. for further studies. How, if at all, has your time as a Falcon filtered into your life today?

It’s filtered into my life in the sense that I met my boyfriend through the football teams. We share the same favorite number, 3, which coincidentally is a size S for the men’s kits. I am quite a tall woman, meaning that really a men’s S fits me perfectly, while my boyfriend definitely cannot squeeze into a size S jersey. Still, he insisted on getting the number 3 men’s jersey at the start of the season, until he eventually realized around two months in that it was way too tight on him, so he let me have it in this really funny, melodramatic gesture. That was the first time we really talked, and now here we are, still together four years later.