Finding himself staring at a screen, Sunrise knew already more or less what he was going to talk. He had received an unusual request, to be interviewed by his home region’s public TV channel. The situation was a tinge peculiar: while there were a reasonable number of Dutch players in the history of the league, Sunrise van de Schubbekutteveen happened to be the very first one to hail from the province of Zeeland.

It is rather understandable when one contemplates the situation of the region. Zeeland is the smallest and least populous province of the country and its main sport is most likely soccer, since the days of VCV Zeeland out of Vlissingen playing in the Eerste Divisie but also with the efforts of Schubbekutteveen’s village team in the very same division currently going on so it’s not a shock the province had failed to produce anyone noteworthy in a sport that the region barely has had any teams to speak of.

At any rate, Sunrise was then greeted by the host, a lovely young journalist who seemed to be incredibly ecstatic to talk with someone like him. Her first question was the one he expected the most, whether he was happy to be playing for a team in such a high-standards league and, after that, asked about how it felt to be in Calgary.

Funnily enough, he had to talk about the team’s woes back when he arrived and after some of the more woeful times, he backed the Dragons wholeheartedly but that was probably the first time someone asked about how it felt to be somewhere else. Calgary wasn’t too far off from what he knew from back home but that was more about Schubbekutteveen, the farming village he would go to often than the province itself, though it did have some conservative similarities that he didn’t bog too much on.

One thing he could definitively share was that the place was cold. Not exactly a shock, given the country he was in, but it still made for a topic of discussion. Schubbekutteveen’s weather was fine enough when compared to the climate of the whole of the Netherlands, hot days peaked at around 33 Celsius and cold days would usually stop at 10 Celsius at worst. Now, he faced days where the degrees would land in the negative double digits and he was much more familiar with ice, both because of his work and because the city itself gave him that opportunity.

It was then time to do the usual, to talk about the team. She asked if there was any way he could describe the Calgary Dragons’ current adventures to those who weren’t following the league for one reason or another. A good moment to remember that Zeelandians were more interested in soccer, perhaps, and that he would do well to advertise his team and the sport he played.

Naturally, their current efforts weren’t too different from the previous season, still a battle against the torrential strength of other teams with curious results. The team was able to put up a fight against some but the strongest teams of the league were still a bit out of their grasp. He unsurprisingly passed it as growing pains, the usual for a team of young players. Besides, they were coming from the cellar of the league so any growth was positive growth as far as he was concerned.

That and, well, they made it to the playoffs, right? For as much as Calgary had been handed bad hands in the past and for how much people hadn’t quite rated them as highly as a team member would perhaps hope, the Dragons were no longer that easy to slay. Sure, they weren’t in peak shape but they would still get there soon. It was just a matter of patience and that was all he explained in the interview.

After a bit more talking about his life and his time in other places (he had been in Cologne and Saint Louis, after all), he was good to go back to his focus. The playoffs were coming after all, even if the odds were once again stacked against the Calgary team, he was ready to do his part.

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