The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Lack of scrimmages will affect area teams
Coaches will need to find other ways to evaluate players, test lineups
When the Midview girls soccer team takes the field in its season opener against Elyria on Aug. 21 — provided the season gets state approval — it will be the Middies’ first competitive action in 310 days.
On July 28, the Ohio High School Athletic Association sent a memo to member schools announcing that all school vs. school scrimmages were canceled for contact sports, meaning that the Middies, like every other soccer team in Ohio, had to cancel their scheduled preseason scrimmages.
“It’s disappointing in terms of your hopes for a season more so than anything you gain from a scrimmage,” Midview coach John Bena said. “I’d like to have the girls get out there and play against someone else before the season. But it this makes me very nervous in terms of what the future will hold for a season.”
Midview had scrimmages scheduled on Aug. 11 against Vermilion and on Aug. 17 against Wellington. While scrimmages are suspended for the foreseeable future, theme mo stated that Ohio is “on track” for contact sports of football, soccer, field hockey and cross country to begin practices on Aug. 1.
“Not being able to be able to get out there and run is tough,” North Ridgeville girls soccer coach Chris Moore said.
“You can have intrasquad scrimmages just to get out there and run. But there really isn’t a replacement for being able to get out there against another team.” — North Ridgeville girl soccer coach Chris Moore
The Rangers had scrimmages scheduled against Wooster and Bay.
“You can have intrasquad scrimmages just to get out there and run. But there really isn’t a replacement for being able to get out there against another team.”
A lack of scrimmages this year means teams won’t be able to test and tweak lineups and formations, something that Avon girls soccer coach Attila Csiszar usually prioritizes in scrimmages.
The Eagles had a scrimmage scheduled against Magnificat on Aug. 8 and also backed out of Edinboro University’s annual summer camp over concerns about player safety due to the coronavirus.
“As a coach, one of the first things you do at the
start of the year is try to figure out how to set your team up,” Csiszar said. “We use scrimmages and the preseason to put players in different positions and see how they play there and what the chemistry is like. It helps our confidence as well. If you go into a scrimmage against a strong team and play well, that gives you a big confidence boost going into the season.”
In addition to losing a chance for players to spend more time playing together, the lack of scrimmages also means that coaches lose an opportunity to evaluate players on the roster bubble between varsity and junior varsity.
“It would hurt your bigger schools that have larger numbers that utilize those scrimmages to determine the difference between a junior varsity or varsity player,” Bena said. “It’s not going to impact your starters or upperclassman, in
part because they don’t normally get a lot of playing time in a scrimmage anyway so that way they could stay fresh and healthy. But for younger players you’re trying to get experience for, I think those scrimmages are important to them.”
Scrimmages also could have provided coaches and teams an opportunity to test out any new guidelines or restrictions put in place due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Now a team’s first experience with any changes will be during the season — if there is one.
“For me this year I was really hoping to get a couple scrimmages in so that way we could have a dry run with whatever guidelines and mandates are going to be put into the season,” Bena said. “For a freshman coming in, those scrimmages could be their first time playing against players significantly older than them, so I think it’s very beneficial
from that standpoint. You get sick and tired of going against your teammates every day, so it also allows for you to get some of that nervous energy out by going against another team.”
The OHSAA’s memo comes at a time when most fall sports teams aren’t sure how to proceed. Teams were allowed to move to “Phase 2” of practices — which included contact practices for all sports — on June 18. In the nearly six weeks since, teams have received minimal additional guidance aside from some sports (boys and girls golf, girls tennis and volleyball) being approved for competitions with other schools while the other fall sports (cross country, field hockey, soccer and football) had yet to be approved to have competitions between schools.
For Bena, the OHSAA’s handling of the lead-up to the fall sports season draws a stark similarity to what happened in the winter. On March 12, the OHSAA indefinitely postponed postseason tournaments across all winter sports before canceling the tournaments outright two weeks later.
“Even if you go back to the winter there was a lot of waiting before an official decision was made to cancel the basketball and wrestling state tournaments,” he said. “This is kind of that first step. We still don’t know if we can play on Aug. 21. Right now, we’re in the same holding pattern.”
In a normal season, Bena would use the Middies’ scrimmage against Wellington on Aug. 17 — four days before their seasonopener — as a final tune-up before the games start for real. Now he’ll have a normal practice on that day. If he’s allowed, that is.
“What could be different on Aug. 21 that doesn’t exist on Aug. 17,” Bena said.