When she raises her voice under the helmet, she doesn't talk waterfall-like.
Precise commands come, many of them, and loud.
Julia Sonntag is sitting in the stands of the hockey park in her hometown Mönchengladbach on Thursday afternoon after her 70th international match.
Her voice sounds rough, it is close to hoarse.
"My voice has gotten deeper and deeper over the past few years," she says, laughing.
That must have something to do with the demands of her sport - since the upheaval after the 2016 Olympics in Rio, she has not only been the number one goalkeeper for the Bundesliga club Rot-Weiss Köln, but also for the national team.
"Calm and deep and not shrill"
When Sonntag speaks of her "wonderful work-life balance," the enormous demands placed on national hockey players fall in the "life" area.
Your work will take place in a Mönchengladbach dental practice.
The 30-year-old has long been used to balancing time and interests, which often also means conflict.
And with it her voice.
As a dentist, she mainly needs her level-headed explanatory and sometimes reassuring voice towards patients.
As a goalkeeper, her voice of command then resounds towards the teammates.
Her long-time national team colleague Anne Schröder says: "When Julia puts on her armor, she goes through a transformation: from the mood maker with great humor and a lot of wit to someone who screams a lot and whips us forward."
You can tell: The players are big fans of the voice of their support.
"It doesn't drive you crazy because it's calm and deep and not shrill," says Schröder.
And captain Selin Oruz adds with a smile: "A high-pitched female voice could be quite exhausting at this volume."
Footprints in the cabin
Some club and national team colleagues are also patients of Julia Sonntag.
She has placed bridges or implants in some in the hockey world.
The mouthguard that outfield players wear can provide relief in the event of an accident, but cannot prevent all damage.
It happens that Sonntag takes impressions in the dressing room so that new mouthguards can be made.
Otherwise she tries to separate her two worlds.
On the one hand, in practice, you need a steady hand, on goal you need quick reflexes.
Here, with pain patients, as there, for the back team, she is often the last resort.
"I don't want to miss either of them.
I'm happy when I can let off steam on the hockey field after work and fool around with the girls," says the European Championship silver medalist from 2017 and 2019, who everyone just calls "Ciupi".
Her maiden name is Ciupka.
In order to find a wedding date, the calendar had to be rolled over with the national coach at the time.
Often against full professionals
Everyone in the team is faced with the challenge of practicing an amateur sport like hockey, with which you can hardly earn anything financially, under conditions similar to those of a professional and at the same time making provisions professionally for the time afterwards.
On the other side on the artificial turf, the German women often face off against full professionals, such as the Dutch and Argentine women.
And also the English, who faced the selection of the German Hockey Association on Wednesday (3: 4 defeat) and Thursday (4: 1 win) in two Pro League games.
So players who are moved together for months, especially before a World Cup like this summer in Spain and the Netherlands.
The duel between the different systems, says Sonntag, “is also what appeals to me.
To show that we can still defeat them with our system, which is based on club work and high individual extra effort.
Although they see each other almost every day and we only see each other every few weeks.” As a qualified dentist, she is a prime example of how world class in sport can still be achieved.
After the disappointing quarter-finals at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, the team wants to be among the top 4 nations again at the World Cup.
The core of the team has stayed together, but national coach Valentin Altenburg and his staff are new.
“Because of the postponement due to the corona virus, we even followed a path to Tokyo for five years.
Now we're in the process of opening all the drawers and looking at what can stay and what needs to be renewed and where we can redefine ourselves," says the 30-year-old senior in the squad.
In the coming weeks of preparation for the World Cup, she will again be absent from practice, where she is the only employee besides the boss.
Then even three weeks at a time around the tournament.
This model would not be possible without the compensatory payments from Sporthilfe for employers.
Before a tournament, she says, many patients "have to be treated in such a way that they don't have to come back until I come back".
She rules out the fact that after the World Cup Sunday her patients could then yell at her patients with "cover tightly", "counter safety" or "be ahead of them" in a rough voice.