Chatham Soccer League praises protocols entering 4th mid-pandemic season

Chatham Soccer League is in the midst of its fourth season since the pandemic began in February 2020. CSL President Mark Hall attributed the league's success to its ability to follow protocols, as no COVID-19 cases have been attributed to CSL-related  activities.
Chatham Soccer League is in the midst of its fourth season since the pandemic began in February 2020. CSL President Mark Hall attributed the league's success to its ability to follow protocols, as no COVID-19 cases have been attributed to CSL-related activities.
Staff photo by Peyton Sickles
Posted

PITTSBORO — The last three seasons for Chatham Soccer League have been abnormal, to say the least.

The league’s spring 2020 campaign was essentially wiped out by COVID-19, while its fall season last year began in August with plenty of question marks and new protocols.

Since then, however, CSL has successfully continued to operate despite the ongoing pandemic, and as the league — which primarily offers recreational soccer to children in Chatham County — begins its fall 2021 season, its procedures are beginning to shift back toward normalcy.

“Fall of 2020 actually went well, we had higher participation levels than we expected for still being underneath a lot of restrictions,” Mark Hall, CSL President and Central Carolina Community College’s Chatham Provost, told the News + Record last weekend. “We did a really great job of ensuring everyone’s safety and health, following all the guidelines we had at the time.”

Those guidelines were significant.

The league implemented new procedures like requiring masks for all players and referees, playing some younger-age-group games with smaller teams and no goalkeepers, limiting attendance to two spectators per player and increasing the time between scheduled games in order to clear the fields between matches to prevent possible virus transmission between those leaving the fields and those arriving.

Thanks to those protocols, Hall says the league has had zero COVID-19 cases connected with soccer programming.

“We were lucky last year that we implemented the protocols we were supposed to and people complied,” said Hall, who explained that CSL has followed the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the North Carolina Youth Soccer Association throughout the pandemic. “I think if those parents and those players had not gone along with the guidelines that we were implementing based on the information we had from the state, it might not have worked. Because our group stayed in compliance with those rules or regulations, the schools allowed us to continue to use their fields for practice and for games.”

As spring came, the league’s situation continued to improve.

“We had more (participants in the spring 2021 season) than we did in the fall (of 2020), which is always a good sign, it means that our program was growing again,” Hall said. “The spring of 2020 was pretty bad on everyone in youth sports, so it was nice to see that come back up.”

While some protocols began to relax (the league’s mask requirement was lifted late in the spring season), Chatham Soccer League teams still no longer shake hands with each other after matches, instead standing in a line across from the opposing team and clapping. Hall believes this could be one of the few lasting effects of the pandemic on CSL.

“I imagine that there might be a new culture around shaking hands,” Hall said. “I don’t know how many people are going to shake hands after games anymore. It’s a great sportsmanship thing to do. But I think lining up across from each other and clapping and telling each other ‘Good game’ is pretty sufficient.”

Aside from that, however, the league is beginning to return to normalcy.

“The environment at the games is a little more like it was before the pandemic,” Hall said. “This season is looking good. We have many more (participants) this fall than we did last fall and so we’re not back to where we want to be, where we were pre-pandemic, but we are definitely doing a lot better than we were last fall, so that’s very encouraging.”

Given the toll the pandemic took on youth sports as a whole, Hall recognizes that the support of players and families in following the protocols set out by CSL helped the league avoid the disastrous outcomes that have befallen many other youth sports organizations.

“We were very fortunate as an organization that we have survived,” Hall said. “In the soccer world, there’s a lot of smaller clubs around the state that had to basically just fold, and stop providing soccer for various reasons, but the pandemic has been pretty hard on them. So we’ve been really fortunate and lucky, in a lot of ways.”

Hall also believes it was important for the community that CSL has played for most of the pandemic.

“Our players got to continue to play and got to continue to develop as soccer players,” Hall said. “I think it gave a lot of the players — especially when schools were still in remote learning — a safe place to be with other people their age and to socialize, and also to be active and just enjoy being outside and doing a game that they enjoy. That, I think, probably took away a lot of the stress and pent-up energy they might have had from being inside their houses most of the day behind a screen. I’m glad that our organization, through soccer, was able to give them an outlet for that.”

Now, as the league enters its fourth season since the beginning of the pandemic, Hall is optimistic about the state of Chatham Soccer League and the services it continues to provide to its participants.

“We have a healthy program that’s set up to grow more and more each year,” Hall said. “People are really enjoying the increased access to soccer. It’s not normal, but it’s not as abnormal as last year.”