GAINESVILLE, Fla. — As Florida soccer coach
Becky Burleigh stepped up for a brief chat Tuesday, members of her team broke the first official UF practice of the 2020 athletic calendar — any sport — with a customary "Go Gators!" cheer.
Check that. Not exactly customary.
"You noticed that was a
contact-less 'Go Gators,' right?" Burleigh asked.
Consider it just another caveat — one of many, with more surely on the way — to the so-called new normal. Yet, far more significant was the fact the Gators were on an actual practice field and doing actual drills in anticipation of an actual season. The last UF team to so much as stage a practice was the swimming and diving squad back on the morning of March 13, the day college athletics went full shutdown, with all Gators facilities closing at the end of business. That was 145 days ago.
Welcome back, sports.
"Anything at this point, we'll take," senior midfielder
Parker Roberts said. "It feels amazing to see people on the team playing against one another. We haven't seen that in quite some time. It does feel quite surreal, right now, because we didn't see this happening on time."
Yet, here they are. For now.
The soccer team convened for its first meeting Monday night, doing so in the spacious Holloway Touchdown Terrace in the north end zone of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. There the squad of more than 30 (plus coaches and support staff) could exercise proper social distancing in both their meeting and dining spaces.
The first day of practice offered other twists. The team split the squad in half, with the first group practicing 2:30-4:30 in sweltering, unforgiving afternoon heat, with temperatures well over 100 degrees on the field at the soccer/lacrosse complex. All non-players wore masks, which took some getting used to.
"It's a challenge," Burleigh said. "I feel like voice projection is one of my strengths, but in this mask it's a whole new level. I've got a feeling I'm going to lose my voice a lot sooner than normal. Trying to project through a mask is tough, but there's a lot tougher things going on out there. We can make that work."
Gladly, as it turned out.
"It feels real again," sophomore midfielder
Laney Steed said. "Hot. Florida. Palm trees. Sun."
And soccer.
Sophomore midfielder Laney Steed in action during Tuesday's first soccer practice.
Because it had been going on five months since her players had put so much into one two-hour session, Burleigh knew how pivotal it was to ease into the first practice. There was plenty of fitness rolled into the session, as well as skill, but the Gators will take incremental steps before they're back to flying up and down the field in 11-on-11 scrimmages.
"I think the important thing for us is taking it, physically, one step at a time," Burleigh said. "We're not going to try to make this all change overnight. We have a good plan, in terms of periodization, to get the players back to where they need to be, but at a gradual pace where we don't increase it too much. And then I think it's just different having contact with people for the first time since March. We actually had people touching each other, hitting each other, kicking each other and falling on the ground. It's just different. I'm sure we'll have some sore people [Wednesday]."
Becky Burleigh, the only head coach UF soccer has ever known, donned a mask Tuesday during the first practice of what will be her 26th season on the Gators' sideline.
Some members of the second practice group, which filed onto the field for a 4:30-6:30 session, watched the first group anxiously from the other side of the fence. They'd waited a long time for this.
"Even [Monday], at our first team meeting, that's the first time we've all been in the same room together," senior goalkeeper
Susi Espinoza said. "A lot of us have been sitting in our houses just waiting for a chance to pass the ball to each other. Even watching practice, I'm so excited for something as simple as 5-on-5. That means the world to me right now."
Added senior forward
Deanne Rose: "Good energy, that's all I'm expecting from the team; that and a positive attitude [and] accepting the fact it's not going to be the same as it was before. We just have to take it for what it is and go from there."
The 2020 opener is scheduled for Sept. 10 at UCF, but exactly no one on the team is allowing themselves to look that far ahead. This was a start. A much-needed start, of course, but just a first step of a very slow (and somewhat strange) rollout.
Next up? Volleyball will be on the court in limited numbers Friday (indoor sport, with different rules for its return), with a first full practice tentatively set for Aug. 17. That's also the same day football can be on the field for the first time, the Southeastern Conference announced Tuesday.
So soccer got the ball rolling.
Everyone hopes it keeps rolling.
"I think our [players] worked hard over the last month being here [for voluntary workouts], and I think we had a lot of players who worked hard during quarantine," Burleigh said. "But there's no way you can gain game fitness running and working out in a gym. It's way different, and I think we can definitely see that."
And even
that (along with the
contact-less "Go Gators!") was good to see.
