REIMS, France _ The U.S. women's national team held its first World Cup practice in France on Saturday, running through a brisk afternoon session in Reims, a city of less than 200,000 people about 80 miles east of Paris.
The team has spent most of the last two weeks training in London, arriving in France just hours before the tournament opener between France and South Korea.
"It was just a shift in all of us, in our mental preparation. From the preparing stage to the performing stage," forward Christen Press said.
"You wait years to be here. And that's a journey. And then when you get here, there's a whole other journey that starts. So I think the team's in a good space because we did have that time where we got to just focus on what we were doing, remove ourselves from the pressures of the outside world."
The U.S. is one of the last teams to begin World Cup play, facing Thailand on Tuesday, the final day of opening games. The wait is proving difficult.
"Watching all these games that are going on right now, that just gets me more excited," said midfielder Lindsey Horan, one of 11 World Cup debutantes on the U.S. roster.
Press, who played in the tournament four years ago in Canada, said it's important to tune those distractions out.
"We've been counting down to our first game," she said. "Until then, this is all just everything else going on. We can appreciate it and we can enjoy it. But it's just hyper-focused on Game 1."
