FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – First it was the cold. Now it’s the snow.
Freezing temperatures, high winds and wind-chills below zero forced the postponement of the New England Revolution’s home opener against Orlando City SC last weekend, and now Winter Storm Stella is making her mark on the Revs’ training schedule as they prepare for Saturday night’s visit to FC Dallas.
More bitter cold pushed New England’s training session indoors to the Empower Field House on Monday, while blizzard conditions required the Revs to cancel Tuesday’s session altogether. Stella is expected to dump anywhere from 1-2 feet of snow on the Foxborough area through Tuesday night.
It’s been a frustrating week for New Englanders, who had hoped the worst of winter had passed following a string of 60-degree days in February, but Massachusetts native Jay Heaps knows that unpredictable weather is simply part and parcel of living in the Northeast.
“There are certain things we can and can’t control,” said the Revs’ head coach. “Weather is weather. I grew up in this area. In February it’s beautiful, it’s 60 degrees, and now we’re talking about a blizzard.
“We roll with the punches. We’ll just make sure that we’re safe, and we get our work in so that we’re ready for Dallas.”
Despite having to cancel Tuesday’s training session, the Revs will still have four sessions to prepare for FC Dallas; the same number of training sessions they would have during a normal week. That’s because they trained on Monday, which would have been an off day under normal circumstances.
Still, the weather has undoubtedly played its part on the Revs’ early-season schedule, but they won’t be looking for any excuses when they take the field at Toyota Stadium on Saturday night.
“We have to be professional about it,” said Kelyn Rowe. “We have to make sure that we’re ready come this week. We ended up having a couple days off (over the weekend) to get our legs back and get our minds onto Dallas now.”
