University of Georgia Athletics
A Quick Chat With ... Louise Hogrell
September 08, 2016 | Soccer
By John Frierson
UGAAA Staff Writer
Georgia women's soccer goalkeeper Louise Hogrell is from Åsa, Sweden, a small town on the coast. How small? Here is the entirety of Wikipedia's description of Åsa: "Åsa is a locality situated in Kungsbacka Municipality, Halland County, Sweden, with 3,369 inhabitants in 2010." That's it.
Hogrell, a junior three-year starter and a former Sweden U-19 national team player, had a lot more to say about home during a quick chat on Wednesday. She talked about the wonderful food back home, the not-so-wonderful food in the United States, a popular sport called floorball and a lot more. Here's some of what she had to say:
Frierson: When was the first time you came to the United States?
Hogrell: I was here on vacation once for two weeks, in L.A., but I moved here two years ago now. ... I was there with my team from Sweden and we were there for vacation and a training camp kind of thing.
Frierson: What do you miss most about home?
Hogrell: My parents, my sister, the food.
Frierson: When you say the food, what immediately comes to mind?
Hogrell: Where I grew up is right by the sea, so the fish is always fresh, and I used to eat fish maybe three-to-four times a week. So I miss eating fish a lot and different kinds of seafood, and just not eating everything fried (laughs) and super sweet.
Frierson: That's pretty much America in 2016, sweet and fried.
Hogrell: Yeah, I think Sweden in general is a very healthy country eating-wise, and it's easy to fall into the habits of eating take-out pretty often here.
Frierson: I was in Iceland this summer and one of the things I loved is that in most of the country are no fast-food places. Every restaurant is local and serving fresh, real food.
Hogrell: The town I'm from is really small. We have two pizza places and a restaurant, and a Thai food place. That's it.
Frierson: What was the biggest adjustment coming to the U.S.?
Hogrell: The language, of course.
Frierson: How young were you when you started learning English?
Hogrell: I started taking English in school when I was 8, but I realized after getting here that taking English is absolutely not the same as speaking English. You knew how to hold a decent conversation, but when it came to other things, like when you were going to tell someone something or try to understand what someone said, I think I used Google Translate a lot.
It was pretty hard in the beginning, but when you've been talking English for two years ... I got used to it after a year maybe.
Frierson: What do you do during the quiet times, away from school and soccer?
Hogrell: I like to draw a lot. I'm an art major so I enjoy just drawing and creating.
Frierson: Would you like to do something in art down the road, professionally?
Hogrell: Soccer is obviously my first pick, but interior design is my second pick.
Frierson: What was your first Georgia football game like? I'm guessing that was a pretty weird or eye-opening experience.
Hogrell: I was very excited to go to my first Georgia football game. The only thing was, I got there and I didn't know anything about the rules, it was so hot and I left at halftime (laughs). It just got too much; I was confused and didn't really understand what was going on.
Frierson: Do you understand it better now?
Hogrell: We don't really have time to go to a lot of football games, especially between (Friday and Sunday home soccer) games, when it's hot outside. It's not the best thing. I think I'm getting a better understanding of it; I watch it but I would rather watch soccer.
Frierson: Is basketball a bigger sport there?
Hogrell: I don't think football or basketball is very big in Sweden. We have something called floorball instead. It's a mixture of land hockey, ice hockey, maybe like field hockey. You play it on something like a basketball court with the walls around it, and you play it with a plastic stick and a plastic ball.
(Here's the Wikipedia entry on floor ball: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floorball.)
Floor ball or handball and ice hockey, those are the big indoor sports.
Frierson: Handball is one of those sports that I think should be much more popular here. I watched a lot of it during the Olympics.
Hogrell: I think the reason why it's very popular overseas, especially in Sweden, is because we have the summer sport and the winter sport. I would say soccer is obviously the biggest summer sport, and golf, and in the winter you have ice hockey, floorball and handball indoors, because you can barely do anything outside.
Frierson: Is there a part of American cuisine that you've really developed a real taste for here, even if it's probably not to good for you?
Hogrell: I've actually never liked fried food, until I tried Zaxby's. Now it's my biggest weakness (laughs), even though it's terrible for you.
Frierson: It's wonderfully terrible, I suppose.
Hogrell: Yeah, the same with another one of my biggest weaknesses: doughnuts from Krispy Kreme — regular glazed.
Hogrell and the Bulldogs open SEC play Friday night at No. 15 South Carolina.
John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
