With the arrival of the spring season, the GA community is excited to finish the school year strong with the finals sports season underway. Now that GA has officially gone mask optional, much has changed from the past couple years. When COVID-19 first spread throughout the United States in 2020, the spring sports season was canceled for the safety of students. Now with loosening restrictions around the community, the spring athletes are ready to go!
Ms. Dakota Carroll, Associate Athletic Director and both soccer and assistant lacrosse coach, expressed her relief that the athletes are able to enjoy their first normal season in a long time: “The fall sports season felt almost normal being outside without masks on, so I am excited to feel that again this spring.”
Carroll then shared her feelings about how the pandemic has affected athletics, especially throughout the last year: “I have been working in athletic administration for 8 or 9 years now, and I have never seen school years like this ever before, so navigating last year was extremely difficult.” Although she was glad that GA was able to make sports seasons work last year, she feels that it “never felt fully normal.” But now with warmer weather, Caroll is excited to see everyone get moving and see how much of an impact a regular season will have on GA’s athletes.
Although her main sport to coach is soccer, Carroll was delighted to be a part of this year’s girls lacrosse squad. What she is looking forward to most in lacrosse this spring is “the overall experience for the team.” Caroll hopes that everyone will come out of the season having learned something: “We have a variety of levels playing lacrosse this year, so it will be really good for the players who are brand new to the sport to get a better understanding of it and have fun along the way.”
The best part is that she will be able to learn and grow with the athletes as this is her first time coaching during the spring season.Caroll recalls, “the girls have done a really good job balancing their goofiness with knowing when it’s the right time to take things seriously.” The lacrosse team’s focus throughout these first few weeks of training has made the transition from soccer to lacrosse an easy one. She compliments GA’s resilience through the past few seasons and is relieved to finally see it all pay off this spring.
Just like soccer and lacrosse, most students share the same feelings and are ecstatic to be outside and have fun. For instance, Softball is off to a great start and won their first game with a score of 20-0 over Germantown Friends. Moreover, after Track & Field’s first meet, they are determined to acquire another title under their belt. GA is eager to see what the teams can accomplish as the season progresses.