This year’s Montrose JV soccer team consisted of Tvesha Patel ’27, Mia Cahill Farella ‘27, Gabby Haney ‘27, Annabella Kelly ‘27, Bella Gonet ‘26, Maria Silveyra Dodds ‘26, Rachael ‘26, Lucy Farr ‘26, Caroline Brennan ‘26, and Natalia McLaughlin ’26. This year’s coaches were Devyn Gianino and Maggie Gilbert, who are both Montrose alumni. 

The practices are 45 minutes long, from 3:15-4:00 PM after school on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays. When school is dismissed, girls change into shorts and sport shirts and then go outside to put on cleats and shinguards. Then, we go out to Miracle Field and met the coaches there. Usually, the team waits on Miracle Field until everyone arrives to start practice. 

At the beginning of practice, we do warm-ups to get our body warmed-up. For this, we usually do lunges, thigh pulls, goalie scoops, jogging, high knees, butt kicks, open-the- gates, close-the-gates, and zombies. Next, we juggle the soccer ball for about 3 minutes. After that, we do three to four activities, which change every day. Some of these include volleys, shooting, and more. Finally, if we practice well, we play a game: usually Scrimmage, World cup, Thunder, or Steal the Bacon. The games change every day, too. Two minutes before practice ends, we do cooldowns. Cooldowns are stretches that stretch the parts of your body you used a lot — for example, your quads or hamstrings — so they don’t feel sore the next day. 

This season of JV soccer would have been for nothing without our two great coaches, Devyn and Maggie.  They put so much work into our practices. We asked them how long it takes to plan practices, and Maggie said, “ 15 to 20 minutes…Devyn and I come to Montrose early with ideas and discuss before practice. We’re usually on the same page which makes things really easy!” They usually have an agenda in every practice. “Besides warm-ups, juggling, and cool downs, we usually have 3-4 activities. Our 45-minute-long practices limit the number of activities we can complete.” The most important thing that they want everyone to do at practice is to “work hard, have fun, and listen!”

We weren’t the only ones who enjoyed this soccer season! We interviewed some of our teammates. Gabby Hasenjaeger ‘27 said: “In soccer, it is easy to make friends because we have something in common, and that is the love of soccer. It doesn’t matter if we are new to soccer or we have played for a long time; we just enjoy playing the sport together.” We also interviewed one of our new soccer players this year, Tvesha Patel ‘27. She said: “It isn’t hard. [Montrose] teaches us everything we need to know about soccer.”

 This year there were 10 people on the JV soccer team, which was pretty helpful for the activities that included partners. Though it was short, the season was very fun. I think all of us enjoyed it, and we looked forward to playing games next fall. Thank you so much for a great season, Maggie and Devyn — we had a great time!

Maria Silveyra Dodds ’26, Mia Cahill Farella ’27, and Bella Gonet ’26, Contributing Writers

msilveyra@montroseschool.org

mcahillfarella@montroseschool.org

bgonet@montroseschool.org