Flying Cardinals stuck indoors
Area storms force Upper Dublin fall sports teams inside for 1st day of practice
The first day of fall sports practice did not go as planned.
The second full week of August typically includes a bright sun, clear skies and temperatures pushing triple digits.
That was not the case Monday. Heavy thunderstorms resulted in a Flash Flooding warning in southeastern Pennsylvania and area teams were forced to head indoors for their first day of practice.
Upper Dublin — a school that had success in girls soccer, boys soccer, field hockey and football last fall — had some of its teams head to the main gym for workouts.
“It’s a competitive situation,” girls soccer coach John Topper said. “We need to sort out the team situation as early as possible and indoor is not ideal. We get to get some fitness in and see what the girls can do on the ball, but actually seeing them play in a game-like situation won’t happen until we’re outside.”
“I was hoping to get outside and beat the rain.” boys soccer coach Andy Meehan said. “The rain would have been fine, but it’s the thunder and lightning that’s the issue. Fortunate for us we have good indoor space, so we were able to utilize what we had. We did have to make some adjustments.”
Those adjustments included focusing more on conditioning and individual skills rather than real game situations.
“Fitness is always a big part of this,” Topper said, “seeing their play in tight spaces, what girls can do with the ball at their feet in individual skills. That stuff we
can get a good idea of, but we’re all chomping at the bit to get outside.”
“We do mainly fitness,” Meehan echoed. “We do fitness testing for the first day anyway ... so we were able to get that out of the way and then do some indoor futsal stuff which is always fun, but you want to get outside so you can see some of the players in the actual game.”
Being inside isn’t completely bad. Girls soccer senior midfielder Aidan Hopkins found some positives.
“I’m so excited to be back,” she said. “Just seeing all the returning seniors is really exciting, then seeing all the young freshmen coming out. We have a big freshmen class and it’s very exciting to see all the faces, see everyone back out there getting touches in.
“The opportunity for us to be stuck indoors together is a lot nicer because of being able to on the first day already make relationships with the younger players. We all got to know each other better than the whole intimidation factor of us all basically being out there on the field. I know when I was a freshman it was scary, so having them come in and establish relationships in a classroom together was nice.”
The girls soccer team went 14-0 in Suburban One League American Conference play last year and reached the district playoffs. With 12 or 13 key contributors back, they are setting big-time goals for 2018.
“That’s just scratching the surface of what we want to accomplish this season,” Hopkins said of the 2017 results. “Those are definitely goals on the way, however the bigger goals are winning the district, getting to states, hopefully making a run in states. That’s something we really wanted to emphasize last year in the playoffs — not just getting to playoffs, but making a run. Obviously we can’t look past the league, we do have a lot of big opponent coming in — we just had Abington join our league. We’re definitely excited for what the league competition brings and what our out-of-league competition brings. They are all just stepping stones for that big goal of winning the state.”
The boys soccer team went 10-3-1 last year and finished third in the SOL American. The Cardinals had a chance to win the league in the last game of the season but lost to eventual champion HatboroHorsham. They lost a big group of seniors but have a large junior class ready to step up.
“It’s going to be a little bit tougher with Abington in the league,” Meehan said, “and I feel like with the teams that are already in the conference and then you add another team like Abington it’s just going to get that much harder to win, but I believe we are up for the challenge for it.”