Young Lionesses midfielder Erica Parkinson takes us behind the scenes as England prepare for the Women's Under-17s World Cup in Dominican Republic with a week in Miami...

I was with my family when I received the news that I’d been called up for this World Cup and it was a great moment to share with them.

It’s always amazing to be picked but especially for a tournament like this, where you get to represent your country on the international stage. It’s an honour. We’re all united and feel ready to take on this World Cup.

Before we flew out here, we had an event with Nike, who wanted to wish us good luck. It was great to feel such support from a great company and us all being there made it feel like an even more united camp. We felt a really special sense of support and a special vibe with what they provided for us.

It was nice to be able to share that send-off with our families, too. It was great to be able to share that moment with everybody around us.

We then flew out to Miami, where we’ve spent a week preparing for the tournament ahead of our first match on Friday. A lot of the girls have never been to Miami so it’s great to experience this new culture and climate together. We’ve really enjoyed it.

Obviously acclimatising to the heat that we’ll find in the Dominican Republic is really important too. We did have to deal with the hurricane in this part of the world, which was quite unexpected, but we were able to adapt our schedule and continue training as usual.

A prep camp is vital going in to such a big tournament because it helps you adapt and also means you spend quality time with your teammates. Chemistry on and off the pitch is really important. Now we can just focus on the football, going over everything we’ve worked on.

A lot of the focus in training has been around getting to know the girls we haven’t played with and preparing for the group-stage games. Obviously we hope to go further than that but we are taking it step by step.

We talk a lot about a quote from the British rowing team, ‘Will it make the boat go faster?’ That basically means we need to make sure that everything we do helps us reach the end goal of performing at our best in this tournament. The intensity we’ve trained at certainly does that.

In our downtime, it’s a mixture of socialising but also listening to your body and making sure you’re ready. That might mean taking some time to yourself and getting the mental rest, as well as the physical rest, that you need. We all love spending time with each other but we respect each other’s boundaries and we all need to get adequate sleep, the right food, and recover properly.

All of it is to ensure we’re ready to go.