Forcing athletes to play six feet apart in a contact sport is just unfair and unlogical. 

We are stuck playing sports with regulations that are just not realistic in many ways.

I am a soccer player for Placer United Soccer Club NPL 1.

The state has sent out different stages for Northern California sports to follow. So far, our club is at stage two, which includes no contact, being six feet apart from one another, no sharing of equipment, coaches and players wearing face masks when not playing and no spectators allowed including parents. 

You are usually in one stage for about six weeks before you can move up to another stage, but this is only if the Covid-19 cases in your region are not increasing. 

The stages are absolutely not realistic while on a  competitive team that travels for games and showcases, especially when you are only at stage two on the four stage bar.

The clubs in our region are involved in four different stages that include many different rules and regulation bases on their city’s Covid-19 cases. 

My club has been at stage two for almost three months now. At this point my whole team is over it. We aren’t ready for any upcoming games or tournaments because we haven’t had the ability to play soccer like when we did in the past.

My coach has followed the rules by wearing a mask everyday when we are on the field, and we still get complaints from not only coaches from different clubs but also parents about how we aren’t socially distancing.

All while there are baseball games that are being played throughout all of Granite Bay without any social distancing, even though they have the same guidelines as my club.

On June 12, Placer United got shut down because there was a picture taken of our facility and a complaint from a coach at Roseville Soccer Club about how Placer United wasn’t socially distancing or following the Health Department guidelines.

Little did he know, we had a whole guideline made for all players that were training in the facility, such as a six foot boxes, no contact, and coaches and players wearing masks and using hand sanitizer. 

Placer United was very organized and aware of the guidelines sent out by the Placer County Health Department. They adapted to the regulations and made the indoor facility arrangements fit these guidelines.

It astonishes me that people want to get Placer United shut down so badly that they have to take time out of their day to drive to the facility to just complain about our club and how we run things. 

We have had parents come to our glass door and film the girls inside the building playing soccer. We now need parent volunteers to sit at the door so that people stop taking pictures of us.

This can, in a way, make me feel very violated. I’m not comfortable playing soccer while there are parents watching our every move to see what we are doing wrong and calling us out.

Not only that, but we have had privacy issues with parents flying drones over practices that are being held by Placer United. This is the reason why we have been practicing in our indoor facility, not just because we feel like it and we want to break any violations.

We are technically still in the same stage we were in July, there has been little to no progress on the extent of moving to another stage from the Placer Health Department.

I’m not sure how people expect players to get ready for college and high school soccer when we haven’t been able to play a game in a year. This makes no sense and has absolutely no logic behind it.

I have been pretty much completely quarantined with my team this whole time. We have had many practices a week and so far we are all safe and healthy. 

We need people to mind their own business and worry about their own clubs and how their teams are doing instead of worrying about ours.