Six weeks ahead of the start of the season on 28 August, the Borussia Dortmund women's football team have resumed training. With temperatures way over 30 degrees on Monday evening, the team that achieved promotion to the Bezirksliga last season had a light session on the training pitches at the BVB Evonik Football Academy on Strobelallee. 

Coach Thomas Sulewski was able to count on 23 players from the 25-woman squad. ''The attendance was really really good. That's what you want to see,'' said the satisfied coach. The team's first friendly match, away to Lower-Rhine side Eintracht Emmerich, is scheduled for Saturday 23 July. 

The players of the Kreisliga champions, who start their second season on August 28 with a match away to SF Westfalia Hagen, had their first get-together last week. First on a boat trip on the Ijsselmeer lake in the Netherlands, then paddle-boarding on the Ruhr, followed by a meeting in SIGNAL IDUNA PARK on Sunday. "We discussed the coming campaign, what preseason looks like in concrete terms, what to expect in training and also welcomed the new players," explained Thomas Sulewski. Before the start of training on Monday evening, the team went to the TU Dortmund for preventive and performance diagnostics.

The newly-promoted team will largely retain the same group of players from last season. Three players - Lilli Prinzen, Neele Dröter and Anna Lena West - will move into the newly-formed second team, while Laura Höhl has brought an end to her playing career. The new arrivals are Lea Auffenberg (free agent), Mia Macarena Bedarf (FC Iserlohn), Mandy Reinhardt (1. FC Recklinghausen), Nora Rechenbach (Kickers Offenbach) and Marie Grothe (Habinghorst)

"The important thing is that we are able to integrate the new players into the team structure in the coming weeks before the season get underway and that we once again form a tight-knit unit in the same way we did last year," said Sulewski, who also expressed his satisfaction with the way the new arrivals have bolstered his team across the park: "We have more quality in every position." That much was clear at the first training session. "For a casual warm-up, it was really decent. We started off with a few circle games, then moved on to simple passing drills to get back into the swing of things. At the end, we played a big game with two-evenly matched teams. It ended goalless, but both teams had chances to score and defended well," said the head coach.

A total of five friendly games are scheduled before the league season gets underway, the first of which will be away to Landesliga club Eintracht Emmerich next Saturday. This will be followed by games at home to Landesliga team BV Werther (July 27, 20:30 CET, BVB Football Academy), away to TSV Landau/Wolfhagen (July 30, 16:00 CET), away to Westfalenliga team Arminia Bielefeld 2 (August 7, 11:00 CET) and, finally, at home to TSV Munich 1860. "This is more or less a rematch of last year's inaugural match at the Rote Erde stadium," said Thomas Sulewski, who was thrilled that the match could be arranged to tie in with the end of BVB's training camp from 10-14 August in Kitzbühel.

Between their return from training camp in Austria and the start of the league season on 28 August, the Black & Yellows will have to be ready for competitive action on Sunday, 21 August, when they face Landesliga side TuS Wadersloh in the first round of the Westfalenpokal.

Fans will have to wait a little longer for the first Dortmund derby in the Bezirksliga; BVB will host TuS Eichlinghofen in a local match-up on 18 September.