MANSFIELD, Ohio — Fall sports practice began in earnest Saturday morning for tens of thousands of high school athletes around the state.
Several hundred of them were at Spartan Fields for a 16-team, 12-school boys soccer super scrimmage.
“We’ve been hosting this for six or eight years now,” second-year athletic director Frank Gordon said. “It’s the official first day of practice and we like to do something a little different.
“For some teams, this is the fist time they’ve been together. Some teams haven’t even passed out uniforms yet.”
In addition to the host school, teams from Lexington, Ontario, Clear Fork, Mansfield Senior and Temple Christian took part in the event. Lex, Ontario and Clear Fork each had two teams in the field, as did Norwalk. There also were teams from Willard, Oak Harbor, Riverdale, Johnstown-Monroe and Granville Christian.
Three fields were in use with the first round of games beginning at 9 a.m. The final game began at 6:20 p.m.
“It’s a full day,” Gordon said. “We like to give teams the opportunity to see several different schools.”
Teams each played five games. Each game was limited to 30 minutes and teams had an hour off between games.
“We are down a couple of teams from last year,” Gordon said. “We would have liked to have two more teams, but we had a couple teams that had to back out at the last minute.”
The regular season begins Aug. 21.
“It will be here before we know it,” Gordon said. “We’re excited to get going.”
