Since the start of both the Park football and soccer team seasons, the two teams have had to share the varsity field for practices.With the construction of the new junior varsity football field and the new track, there has been limited practice space. When sharing the field, the soccer and football teams now face limitations on where they can practice.
Coach Rob Griffin said the football team needs to get innovative to be able to have an effective practice.
“It’s different because we have to be creative with how we use the space,” Griffin said. “We’ve done a really good job of doing so.”
Junior football player Sam Tolzin said sharing the field can be a conflict and affects how much time the football team can be outside.
“It’s sometimes a struggle because after school we can’t go on the field right away into our practice,” Tolzin said. “Having to split the field sometimes means we can’t do everything that we need to do to prepare.”
According to Griffin, special teams such as kickoffs and field goal plays are largely affected by sharing the field.
“Special teams is probably the biggest (concept) that makes it a little bit tougher, just because stuff like kickoff implements take up so much space on the field,” Griffin said. “Especially when you’re trying to do it with three different levels.”
Junior soccer player Tanner Halley said the soccer team hasn’t been affected as much by sharing the field.
“I find that it didn’t affect us too much. We were still able to get our drills in. It would have been helpful to be able to scrimmage full field sometimes,” Halley said.
Tolzin said sharing the field means less practice time for each player, which affects the overall skill level of the team.
“We usually have varsity on one side and JV on the other,” Tolzin said. “If we only have half the field we just have to stay grouped together and we get less reps.”
Halley said that the soccer team could still run a normal practice and that their game preparation wasn’t affected.
“We were still able to get our full practice in and we didn’t really run into too many things that affected our play,” Halley said.
