With the postponing of the athletic season, Pace athletics must accommodate to slow the spread of COVID-19, but also keep student-athletes ready for the season.

Kimberly Schiera, a senior field hockey player, gives her insight as to how the season’s postponement has affected the team.

After training all summer in preparation for the fall, hearing about the plan for the season was heartbreaking news. “I remember that Zoom call, I was actually with another one of the girls on the team and we were both pretty teary-eyed. It wasn’t a very fun call for us,” Schiera mentioned following with, “We’re still hopeful and I think that’s our team mentality.”

In order to stay ready for their season, players often exercise on their own to follow social distancing guidelines. During practice, the team must remain in their family units. The downside to this is that it is much harder for the team to spend quality bonding time together.

Remaining in their family units keeps upperclassmen with upperclassmen which makes it difficult to strengthen a bond with teammates.

More specifically, it is difficult for the upperclassmen to build a relationship with their freshman teammates. Schiera even noted that she has only met a few of her freshman teammates during practice.

To combat this, meeting one on one with other teammates has become important so that the team can maintain their chemistry.

Schiera notes how head coach, Kayte Kinsley, encourages this, saying “I think the way that coach has set it up, Kinsley has done a really good job of making sure that we’re meeting one on one with the freshman if we’re getting lunch with them or going to a park and we’re trying to hang out socially distanced but still get to know each other which has worked really well for us.”

Despite having to work around restrictions and regulations, Schiera still believes that there are positives to her team’s situation. With such a young group, ten of the players being freshman, the team is allowed more preparation to come back stronger.

Schiera thanks the athletic department for actively communicating with the athletes. She stated that she has “friends that go to other schools and they really don’t have a lot of opportunity, their teams haven’t really started practicing, they don’t know the action that they’re going to take.”

She continues, “I think here we’ve gotten to a really good way to where everyone is practicing, everyone has their own time, and it’s been going really well.”

To put it shortly, Schiera is thankful that the athletic department is making the best of the situation. Working hard as usual, the Pace field hockey team will be well-prepared for when the season resumes and will hopefully begin a successful run after persevering through the adversity the world faces.