With the soccer season right around the corner, and tryouts having occurred on October 5th through 7th, Seminole’s girls soccer team has been preparing for their first game on October 27th, against Hagerty High School. The road leading up to the first game hasn’t been an easy one for all of the girls who tried out and have been conditioning to make the team.

According to many of the players and Coach Tom Keiger, optional conditioning began in July, and continued on until the tryouts. The girls put in hours of work while most of Seminole was still at home enjoying the break.

“We’ve been conditioning since the summer, running on the beach in the soft sand,” says Varsity player, senior Mollie Lorden. “[Soccer requires] a lot of commitment, with practices every day we don’t have a game.”

Coach Keiger explained how hard it was for them to choose their teams for Junior Varsity and Varsity. “[The] tryouts were really difficult,” says Keiger, mentioning that they had many experienced young players, and that some freshmen made it to Varsity over upperclassmen for this reason.

Despite this, Coach Keiger is pleased with the players he’s chosen for both Varsity and JV, saying that they have athletes that work well together as a team. Though they don’t have a stand-out ‘star’ athlete, Keiger says he prefers it this way, saying that it’s better that they have a team centered around its 20 players rather than one star player.

Freshman Kaitlyn Lackey, another Varsity player, says, “We’re going to kick some butt [this season]. We all work well together, and I don’t think the last team gelled so well.”

With the season drawing near, the girls soccer team is careful to maintain the proper frame of mind in order to win and do well. Coach Keiger says, “I think we have a great group of girls. We just really have a different frame of mind [this year].”