By Borislava Panayotova

   The TPA girls’ soccer team is starting off the year with a large team. 

   This year, there are 22 players on the team, but despite the larger size, the team is not divided into junior varsity and varsity. Senior Tamsin Hurlbut, one of the co-captains of the team this year, explains that dividing the team into two sections would mean there are flip players. Flip players are players who play both varsity and JV. 

   The division would mean that there are also not enough reserves to exchange every player on the team, leading to players playing at least two full games a week. Such a performance would mean that players have a higher risk of injury and is also really taxing, Tamsin says.

   The decision was made by Head Coach Suzy Duggan who has been the high school team’s head coach for the past couple of years. She is assisted by Coach Christian Palmer. Junior Sayellor Taylor says of the coaches that, “Both of them are really motivational.”

   One thing that’s new for this year’s team is the amount of non-club players. This leads to many of the players being new or more inexperienced. But the team is not particularly worried about their new players. “It’s gonna be a little bit of a learning curve when they first start but afterwards we are gonna have such like a good team,” Sayellor says.

   Co-captain sophomore Hazel Hurlbut also says, “All the inexperienced players have already improved, like, so much over the couple weeks we’ve had practice.”

The practice is paying off.

“I feel like we are going to have a really cohesive, together team this year,” Tamsin says.