I think that was the biggest portion of the adjustment - getting to know your teammates and what their strengths and weaknesses are. — Megan Schnur

This is the third part in a series following Meghan Schnur as she goes through the process from the East Coast WPS Combine in December to the 2009 WPS Draft on Jan. 16, where she'll learn her fate for the inaugural WPS season.

(Jan. 1, 2009) - When her cleats dug into a field in Fort Lauderdale the week before Christmas, Meghan Schnur hadn't played a game of competitive 11-on-11 soccer since the end of the WPSL playoffs in early August. But for Schnur and the rest of the players at the Women's Professional Soccer East Coast Combine, playing top level soccer is like riding a bike.

Even if the ride in question was more like a grueling Tour de France stage through the peaks of the Pyrenees than a leisurely jaunt around the neighborhood.  After a chaotic start, Meghan Schnur settled in and played to her strengths at the WPS East Coast Combine.

 "No matter how long you've been out of playing soccer – if its been a week, two weeks, a couple of months, a year – once you hit the pitch again, it brings back everything that you've been playing for and the reason you're there," Schnur said. "So I don't think [feeling rusty] ever crossed my mind. The only time that crossed my mind was like the day after, when I'm a little sore and I'm going, 'Oh, I haven't played a game like that in awhile.'"

The math at the event, which followed on the heels of a similar audition process in California a week earlier, was brutally simple. There are seven teams set to begin play this spring in the first season of WPS play and each of those teams has already set to work on filling its roster through domestic allocation, international rights selection and an initial four-round draft. So for the 72 players in Ft. Lauderdale and an equivalent total at the California event, the dual combines offered the last opportunity to show future employers why they – and not those around them – merit a spot in January's draft.

But as cutthroat as reality may yet prove to be, the mood in Florida was perhaps more optimistically anxious than ruthless as the players gathered in their hotel the night before the start of competition and listened to the league's seven head coaches introduce themselves, their franchises and their soccer philosophies. This wasn't exactly a job fair in which the prospective employers had to work very hard to sell their organizations to the assembled talent, but their presence helped reinforce the opportunity at hand.

"We've been thinking about this for so long, and everyone has had this as their goal for so long and the weekend was finally here that we've been training for," Schnur said. "I think everyone was kind of a little nervous, because these are the coaches who are going to be picking you or not picking you for their team. So there's a little bit of nerves, no matter what, the first time they get up to talk."

The other key component of the first night came with players learning which teammates they would be playing alongside for the weekend. Two of Schnur's former teammates at the University of Connecticut, Niki Cross and Brittany Tegler, were allotted to one team, as was the case on another combine team for Schnur's WPSL teammate Jenny Mauer and her former Boston College teammate Kia McNeill. But as Schnur recalled with a chuckle of mock forlornness, she was the odd one out on both counts.

"Going into it, I think I knew only a few kids on the team I was placed on, but by the end, I had so much fun with the group," Schnur said. "It was good. If you're used to playing with some players, like if I would have played with the likes of Niki or Brit, it might have been more comfortable. But I think it also kind of made us kind of get out of our shell and get out of our comfort zone and go out and meet new players and work with someone we haven't been used to working with. It was a really great experience all around."

It also didn't hurt that her team was coached by Tony DiCicco, the one name among the seven coaches on hand with which she was most familiar. Schnur hadn't ever played for DiCicco directly, but he coached against her as recently as this summer in the WPSL and certainly had some regional proximity to her youth and college careers as a Connecticut resident whose SoccerPlus academy is headquartered in the Nutmeg State.

"It was definitely a little bit easier – I would say more comfortable," Schnur said of playing for DiCicco and assistant coach Lisa Cole. "Like asking questions if I had anything on my mind. … All the coaches were very approachable, and I'm sure no one had any trouble approaching their coaches about any questions they had, but knowing a familiar face and having them down there was nice."

There was also at least one somewhat familiar face on the field for the "Blue" team, thanks to former Penn State standout Sheree Gray, who Schnur grew up playing with through the youth ranks. But talent can often go a long way toward making introductions easier, and it didn't take long for Schnur to develop chemistry with new faces like former UCLA midfielder McCall Zerboni, fresh off a College Cup appearance with the Bruins, and former Florida standouts Megan Kerns and Shana Hudson.

After an initial training session the first morning of competition, Schnur's team tied its afternoon opener, action she described as understandably "chaotic at the onset." But from the latter stages of that game through games the following two days, the pace slowed to more constructively intense levels and soccer players got down to what they do best.

"I think that was the biggest portion of the adjustment, is getting to know your teammates and what their strengths are and their weaknesses," Schnur said. "Even over the course of three days, you're able to kind of decipher that a little bit. And I think as the weekend progressed, I know especially with our blue team, it was definitely something we developed as one of our strengths, kind of knowing where each other is going to be and playing into that – more of that tactical awareness."

And despite the competitive job market, the combine also offered former and hopefully future competitors a chance to reconnect or meet for the first time. Schnur savored her chance to catch up with Gray for the first time in months and meet former Wisconsin-Milwaukee star Fanta Cooper, a friend of Cross' and the weekend's comic relief.

On some level, everyone in Florida was surely aware that only a few of them will get the opportunities this spring that all of them craved, and as Schnur described it, the intensity of play during games reflected that harsh reality. But off the field, whether walking to a nearby Wal-Mart for last-minute provisions or sitting around a hotel room, solidarity emerged among players who until the weekend had largely been left to chase their dream in solitude or small pockets of likeminded souls.

"There was obviously a lot of talk going back and forth between different things," Schnur said of speculation on the league. "But no one really knows any finite answers, so it's more or less aimless chatter. But in a weird way, it seemed to settle us a little bit, knowing that everyone else has that same sort of curiosity and ambiguity about it. We don't really know what's going on but everyone is in the same boat."

What took place on the field in Ft. Lauderdale will go a long way toward determining which players are cast adrift and which players make it to landfall in January's draft, but for the time being, they're all the slightly sore graduates of a unique experience.

"It was tough; it was competitive," Schnur said. "I think, in a nutshell, it was everything we thought it was going to be."

Graham Hays is an ESPN columnist and a contributor to womensprosoccer.com. He can be reached at moonlighthays@gmail.com. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author's, and not necessarily those of Women’s Professional Soccer or womensprosoccer.com.