College soccer players navigate strange offseason

Madison Hill had enough space in her back yard that she could go outside with a soccer ball this spring and work on her foot skills, but she didn’t have a goal to practice shooting on.

With all of the school fields in Johnson County closed from March through the end of June, that posed a problem — but the Whiteland grad, now a rising sophomore at Marian University, found a way around it.

"Sometimes I’ll just go to the Whiteland high school field," Hill said late last month. "I have to jump the fence, but no one ever stops me."

The COVID-19 pandemic made life difficult on college soccer players, curtailing their spring seasons and slamming the door on any of the organized summer leagues that players normally take part in. Players had to rely on creativity and self-motivation to make it through the offseason.

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Former Greenwood star Kayla Rance, a two-time Daily Journal Player of the Year now entering her junior season at Walsh University in Ohio, had no problem keeping up with the running and body-weight workouts that her team’s strength coach had provided, but finding ways to keep her ball skills sharp was more of a challenge.

"That has been more difficult," Rance said. "Maddy Moan, who was our goalie, she still plays (at Huntington University), and sometimes I’ll go and take some shots on her. We haven’t been able to do that until just recently, since a lot of places’ nets hadn’t been up."

For players no longer residing in Johnson County, the quest to find field space was a bit less daunting. Center Grove alum and current Marian men’s player Connor Campbell, the county’s Player of the Year as a senior in 2016, has spent the offseason in his Indianapolis apartment, where his luck was a little bit better.

"With all of the gyms opening up," he said, "I used the months of May and June to really get in the weight room and bulk up, and I’ve used the month of July as the cardio month, to where I get my fitness back up to being able to play 90 minutes. And throughout those three months, I get touches in every single day. I don’t care where it is; I just find a field. Could be grass, could be turf, just any open space I can get."

What Campbell and the rest of his county peers couldn’t get was actual match experience this summer. When (or if) practices resume in the coming weeks, there will be some rust to shake off in terms of getting re-adjusted to live action again.

The good news is that everyone will be in the same boat. Emilie Hill, a Franklin grad entering her sophomore season at the University of Evansville, is confident that the training she’s done on her own will have her prepared to hit the ground running.

"I don’t think it’ll really have a huge impact," she said. "Just as last summer, it’s every person for themselves, really — you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do yourself to get fit before you come in. Obviously, the coaches can tell who worked and who didn’t over the summer and who’s fit. … I think most people will hold themselves accountable to be fit when they come in."

Not only did the pandemic throw a wrench into the players’ regular offseason plans, but it’s also playing havoc with the 2020 season.

Campbell has concerns that some of his international teammates might not be able to get back into the country in time for the start of the season due to travel bans and quarantines.

"They play huge roles on our team, so it’s going to be tough not being able to get them in," he said. "Hopefully we can get them in first day, but if they have to come later that’s going to impact our training schedule."

Speaking of schedules, those have been significantly altered as well.

Both Walsh (NCAA Division II) and Marian (NAIA) have eliminated nonconference games from their fall slates, with season openers now pushed back to Labor Day weekend or later.

Evansville’s women’s team has not yet posted a 2020 schedule on its official website.

Despite the uncertainty, Rance insists she hasn’t spent any time this summer worrying about whether her Walsh squad will get to play this fall and defend its Great Midwest Athletic Conference championship.

"Honestly, I didn’t think about it, just because I didn’t want to think about it," she said. "Just trying to be positive and will it into fruition."

If the season does come to fruition, Marian’s women will be looking to build upon a 2019 season that saw the Knights advance to the NAIA national championship game.

Madison Hill is one of two local players returning for that team, along with Franklin grad and rising senior Delanie Hill (Emilie’s older sister) — and she’s eager to get back to it, even if she’s expecting players to be a bit rusty when preseason workouts begin.

"Considering we’ve been off for a couple of months, I think it’ll be very difficult," Madison Hill said. "Winter break, we only had a month and a half off, and we were still rusty from that. We got back into it within a week, but I think it’ll be extremely hard going back into it, considering we just have individual time ourselves to keep our touches. It’s a whole different ball game when you have the team as opposed to just yourself."

With any luck, at least nobody will have to jump any chain-link fences to get their shots in.