After arriving with the team midway through the 2019 campaign, Mark Forrest was ready to kick off his first-full year with the club.
But instead of currently playing games on the pitch at Highmark Stadium and at venues around the USL Championship, he finds himself spending time at his parents’ house just outside of Tampa, Florida during the season suspension, which currently runs through May 10.
“It’s been weird, being so close to the start of the season and now being on hold for a while,” Forrest said. “It’s definitely a situation that nobody could’ve really prepared for. I think everyone has been pretty good about it.
“I’ve been trying to heed the advice of everyone and trying to stay home as much as possible.”
While staying at the home in the Sunshine State, the striker has been working on training exercises provided to him by the coaching staff. This largely consists of different body-weight exercises and ball-work drills.
Soccer isn’t the only sport Forrest has been looking forward to playing again. Once he returns to the Pittsburgh area, he’s awaiting to where he and a golf group left off.
Last year, Forrest joined forces with Robbie Mertz and former Hounds Noah Franke and Kyle Morton on the golf course. With half of this group no longer with the club, there will be a couple of spots to fill in 2020.
Playing at courses all around Pittsburgh, many times Forrest would pair with Mertz in a two-person team showdown, a faceoff they’d often win. But as for the best golfer in the group, Mertz would take that title.
“I’m not going to pretend I’m better than him,” Forrest said. “He’s definitely a little better than me.”
Back to the greens of Highmark Stadium, Forrest and the Hounds will look to build off of last year’s season, which saw the squad earn the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference for the USL Championship playoffs.
Forrest said he is looking forward to making a greater impact in his second campaign with the team, once the suspension ends.
“As a team, we want to look to keep doing what we were doing from the year before,” Forrest said. “We had a tremendous season last year, so if we can replicate that it’d be a job well done. It’s about going back to Pittsburgh, hopping in to where we left off and getting back to it.”
