Lansing soccer staying active

With soccer being considered a moderate-risk sport in the age of COVID-19, the Lansing boys soccer team was allotted the month of October to hold team practices. However, Lansing School District went temporarily remote last month, and as a result, less than a handful of practices were held.

When they did happen, the practices were a welcome distraction for the student-athletes, who were in school in person twice a week. For both the Monday/Wednesday and Tuesday/Thursday practices, there were about 20 participants. But that was short lived due to the school switching to 100% remote learning temporarily.

Head coach Benji Parkes has now pivoted to developing youth soccer players with the help of the Lansing Recreation Department. Twice a week, he holds practices for kindergarten through eighth-grade students with several varsity players assisting with the coaching. On Fridays, he holds an optional practice for high school students.

Soccer, like any other activity these days, looks different now. Parkes discussed the adjustments that have to be made to follow protocols.

“We follow all the guidelines,” Parkes said. “Everybody wears a mask. Before they even step on the field, we take temperatures of everybody, whether they’ve been in school or not in school that day. We use hand sanitizer. We don’t pick up any of the balls. I’m the only one that picks up or touches the balls with my hands. I’m the only one that picks up any of the cones. The goalkeepers are allowed to use their hands as long as they have gloves on. But they can’t spit on their gloves as a way to keep them sticky.”

Due to a quarantine period that he had to undergo, last week was the first practice Parkes was able to attend this month. Having been kept away from the field himself, he understands how important these practices can be.

“We’ve had a good turnout,” Parkes said. “We’re just trying to provide an opportunity for the guys to play. [Lansing girls soccer] coach Stickel has been working a lot with the recreational side. He’s been doing a great job of getting the K through 6 going and then the two of us got the seventh and eighth graders involved through this winter program. We’re both doing our own thing for our varsity teams, but we’re just trying to get the kids out.”

Given the winter weather that’s just around the corner, these outdoor practices won’t be able to continue regularly for much longer before moving indoors. With the season scheduled to begin in March, adjustments will have to be made concerning how the varsity team handles the winter.

“If you look at any other normal year, when we go in and we start training in the winter, our thought process and our game plan switches toward what we’re doing next fall,” Parkes said. “So, in any other year, that’d be our focus. We’re focusing on our juniors, our sophomores and our freshmen, really trying to build up our JV and our varsity team for next fall. But now with a spring season, it’s tough because you want to keep those seniors engaged because that’s really all they have.”

At the same time, the winter routine cannot be completely revamped given the short off period that will happen between this season and next season.

“The offseason is actually going to be a whole lot shorter if we end up playing in March,” Parkes said. “Now instead of having eight months to prepare for the next fall, you’re only going to have four. So, that’s kind of the difficult part and trying to have a balancing act of whether or not to focus on this upcoming spring in the hopes that we have a season or you focus more on trying to prep for next fall.”

That uncertainty has been a huge weight for all varsity coaches, going from possibly having athletic competition two months ago to now hoping there will be sports by the end of the school year.

“I jumped on ESPN Ithaca back in September when I heard we were good to go, and I was just really excited,” Parkes said. “Ever since March, it’s been tough for all high school players. All athletes and all coaches, they live to play on the fields and to coach and be with each other. This pandemic has created the complete opposite — isolation and no playing and not stepping foot on the field. I was just excited to get out there in October.”

Parkes added that the unknown of whether or not each practice will be the last for a period of time forces himself and the players to just enjoy the moment even more. Going through the effort to set up practices through the recreation department shows how much he understands what the student-athletes are going through.

“I say that the time spent off the field is just as important as the time spent on the field,” Parkes said. “Without them being able to spend any time together off the field, that makes the time on the field almost more difficult because now you’re trying to get them to play together as well as just socialize with each other. That’s been one thing that I’ve tried to try to incorporate into some of the practices that I’ve run is just give them time to be around each other and don’t just practice nonstop.”

The practices are scheduled to run through the beginning of February which will hopefully lead right up to the varsity soccer season in March. For now, what matters is that they are on the field together once again.