The dog days of August. Professionally, the next two weeks are my least favorite of the year. After the Gallant Tournament champion is crowned tonight or tomorrow, it will mark, in my mind, the unofficial end of summer sports. Then we enter that in-between period, during which no real meaningful games are being played. Kids are enjoying their final weeks of freedom before they head back to school, and practices for fall sports get into gear.
As slow as these next two weeks feel, for athletes, I’d imagine there’s not a lot of downtime. Some Gallant players have had to flex their time management skills and split their evenings between two sports; spend an hour at football practice ahead of a 7:30 baseball game.
But as busy as these athletes might be, it doesn’t change that fact that after the Little League season draws to a close, there’s a real dearth of meaningful games in mid-to-late August. So I can’t help but turn my attention to the upcoming season and start getting excited about what’s to come.
—
The fall season is probably my favorite of the year because there are so many different sports happening at once, and they’re all so unique. Of course, everyone’s attention turns to football as the weather starts getting colder and days get shorter. But there’s so much that’s going on off the gridiron that there’s something for everyone.
The event that really marks the beginning of the fall in my mind is the Lynn City Soccer Tournament. I feel like it’s such a unique opportunity to get a feel for each of the eight Lynn soccer teams all at once.
I love that the tournament happens at the beginning of the season, because not only does it serve to get people excited for high school sports again after a long summer, but it allows you to see the growth displayed by the teams as the season wears on, especially when it comes to English and Classical, since the rivals will clash a couple more times throughout the season.
The tournament is also pretty unpredictable. There are no records and (usually) no injuries at the beginning of the season. The season is new and promising for every team, and that’s part of what makes the games so fun and unpredictable. Besides, sometimes an unexpected loss in a tournament like this can serve to motivate a team and help it identify what it needs to work on going forward. It helps that every team in Lynn is talented and competitive, even if they don’t all reach the postseason. It’s a great way for teams to find out what they have against teams they are already familiar with.
—
One sport that I feel can get lost in the shuffle of all the excitement in the fall is field hockey. Now I know what you’re thinking: ‘but field hockey is so boring, with all the whistles and play stoppages.’” Listen, I get it. I played field hockey in high school, and chose to be the goalie because there were less rules to remember and because I wouldn’t have to wear one of those plaid skirts (that was the main motivation). So I’ll defend field hockey…but it can be really boring. I’ve watched games at Stackpole Field in Saugus or (the old) Blocksidge in Swampscott where the balls hardly rolled because the grass was just a hair too long, and the whole game seems like you’re watching golfers try to chip the ball out of the rough, but each time it moves only a few feet.
Honestly, if all field hockey games were played on turf, it would make a world of difference. It’s a shame there aren’t any field hockey teams in Lynn, because Manning would be a great place to play. And when good, quick teams hit the turf, that ball can fly. Take it from someone who had to stand in the line of fire of some hard-hit balls. It’s a different game. There are still plenty of whistles and stoppages that don’t seem to make a lot of sense to the casual viewer, but it’s a much smoother, faster game.
With that being said, there might not be a team that will benefit more from the new turf field at Blocksidge than the Swampscott field hockey squad this season. The Big Blue made some noise last season, making the tournament but getting knocked out in the first round by Weston. I think a couple of things contributed to the early exit, the first being inexperience on turf fields like they have in Weston, and the second being just an overall lack of tournament experience on a team that had no seniors and just two juniors. Getting to play home games on a brand new field like Blocksidge will help the Big Blue immensely, or at least it should give them a leg up over the other teams still stuck on grass.