After earning a place in playoffs that never happened thanks to Coronavirus last year, girl’s soccer is focused on success. This year success means keeping players and coaches safe from the virus that still runs rampant in the county this year.

“We are very adamant about reducing time in the locker room,” Coach Sean McGarry said. “They do a lot of self-monitoring and we remind them they have five minutes and you’ve got to get out of that locker.”

Not only are the masks a big thing to focus on, but making sure everything is cleaned after use is very important.

“At practices they’re allowed to wear mask if they chose to. Then anytime we’re in dead space, they do,” McGarry said. “When we were inside for weight training days, they had to have a mask on. After we were done, we would spray it down with the lovely mist spray on every work and workout station that they touched.”

Due to COVID, there are students who are either doing remote learning or in-school, but get sent home due to exposure.

“We have a lot of girls that end up missing just because of being in close contact,” McGarry said. “You just end up having girls that miss and you just don’t have full strength.”

Taking the steps to keep everyone healthy is essential.

“They have to bring their own water bottle,” McGarry said. “If we need to refill it as coaches, we put on a glove and we fill it for them. They hold the bottle, we fill.”

McGarry said he stresses that COVID shut the season down last year and they don’t want that to happen again.

“I remind them that our season ended last year because of this and we didn’t get to have our playoff run,” McGarry said. “Lots of handwashing, lots of reminders, lots of not going around people if you don’t need to.”

Since the sport is very close contact, things can happen like injuries almost regularly.

“I had a girl in our first scrimmage actually break her toe in the very first scrimmage, the first 20 minutes into the game,” McGarry said. “She played a little bit in the second half and then she said it hurt too bad.”

Although there are risks this year even going to school, sports still hope to complete the season.

“I actually got us a full schedule of 24 total games with tournaments, non-district and district games,” McGarry said. “You just have to be really good about following procedures and policies. So as long as we do that, hopefully we can have a great season.”