I admittedly haven't ever been to either Cabot or Danville for soccer, or for anything, and yesterday I was sent there to get preseason team photos for a fall preview section we're producing. Both places were very welcoming and the players were cracking me up with their candidness.
Because I hadn't ever been to either field, needless to say I got just a little turned around. My GPS is one of my best friends, but it's rendered useless when I need to find soccer fields that aren't in the school's front or back yard (for the record, Danville's is behind the school, but finding the dirt road that leads to the fields was tricky for me).
ANYWAY. One of the fields I passed in Cabot had about a dozen soccer players on it, but I was skeptical that it was the varsity practice when I noticed just one car in the parking lot. That and the players looked a little...small.. for high school athletes. Turns out they were 5th and 6th graders. Which is the obvious answer to why there was just the one car. But what took me by surprise (and I thought was totally cute, at the risk of sounding corny and at the risk of offending those 5th and 6th grade boys who refuse to be cute anymore) was the pile of kids bikes off to the side of the field. Bikes! These kids rode their bikes to soccer practice. That doesn't happen in Barre, does it? Maybe I'm easily entertained, but I was pretty excited about this. Sorry kids, but it was pretty cute.
When I did make it over to the varsity practice, there were a few more cars in the parking lot, but again, there were bikes. I saw at least one girl come riding in with her cleats and water bottle in hand, looking like she does this sort of thing all the time. I loved it. It was nice to see a community where riding your bike to practice is not only still a safe thing to do, it's also "cool."
-Anna Grearson
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