The overgrown grass and clovers obscured the lines a little, and there were moments of confusion with the rules. Still, the group of soon-to-be sixth-graders stayed six feet away from each other, got a better feel for socially distant soccer with each kick and, most importantly, had fun together when they gathered on a town field in Hopkinton on Wednesday.
“It was kind of neat because I emailed these nine kids and said, ‘Who wants to play?’ and nine kids said, ‘Me.’ It doesn’t normally work like that,” said Scott Zipke, who is part of the Hopkinton Soccer Club, the group that organized the socially distant soccer. “I think they were all chomping at the bit to play sports.”
After reading Gov. Chris Sununu’s guidelines for youth sports during the coronavirus pandemic, the Hopkinton Soccer Club started brainstorming about ways to play following those guidelines. Jason Lang came up with the idea, which was inspired by foosball, and Zipke and others helped shape it. Then they ran it by Hopkinton Recreation Director Paula Simpkins, who got it approved by the town.
Here are the basics: The playing area is divided into boxes that run the entire width of the field but are only five yards long and have a six-foot buffer between them. Only one player is allowed in each box and they must stay in their own box. The player in the box that is on an end of the field with a goal acts as a goalie, but they can’t use their hands. The player in the adjacent box to the “goalie” is on the opposite team, and the player in the next box up the field is on the same team as the “goalie.” For example, if the field is divided into eight boxes each team would consist of four players each who were placed in alternating boxes.
There’s also a version with a two-yard strip down the entire middle of the field. So, instead of one player in each row, there are two players in each row, and those players are on the same team. The teams are once again divided by alternate rows, but in this version two teams of four would only need four total rows since there are two players in each row.
The Hopkinton kids played both versions on Wednesday. They used the exact parameters mentioned above – a field divided into eight extra-wide rows and a field divided into four rows split in half – since the governor’s current orders only allow for nine players and a coach to gather at one time, so two teams of four made the most sense.
Since players have to stay in their own box, the ball did come to a complete halt at times as kids enjoyed the novelty of being able to hold the ball at their feet without defenders bearing down on them to steal it. There wasn’t the same amount of running that takes place in a normal soccer game, either. There were other obvious differences, but they didn’t matter as much as the chance to get outside and play a sport with your friends.
“It’s not goalkeepers, it’s not shooting, it’s not 1-v-1 defense, but it’s good passing and good side-to-side movement, which is kind of cool, and at least we get these guys kicking the ball a little bit,” Zipke said.
The buffer zones between the boxes, and the strip down the middle, were marked with blue (the rest of the lines were white) for emphasis. The kids stayed out of the blue with only a few momentary exceptions on Wednesday. On the rare occasions when their momentum carried them into the buffer zones or they simply lost track of the lines, the coach was quick to blow a whistle and tell the player to move, and the kids all reacted just as quickly and hopped out of the blue, which they were all referring to as “lava.”
“We don’t want to mess this up,” Zipke said. “When I emailed all the parents and let them know the plan, I also told them to make sure their kids come dressed and with everything they need, make sure they put their water bottle away from everybody else, make sure all the parents stay in your cars when you get here. The worst-case scenario is that someone gets sick, but the second worst-case scenario is that we do something wrong and don’t follow the guidelines somehow and mess this up for everyone. We don’t want that.”