The squeak of shoes echoes across the City High gym. Players pass and move off the ball, and cheers for impressive skills occasionally permeate the short games. This is the City High men’s soccer team, who is preparing for another state run after finishing their season at the state quarterfinals last year.

After the 1-0 loss, head coach Jose Fajardo immediately began his planning for the following season. To do this, Fajardo discussed tactics with coaches from Spain during his annual one month trip to the country, as well as watching up to 20 soccer games per week. In addition to these tactics and conversations, he started prepping his players for the season.

“With City High, I like to prepare by knowing what we have, what we are going to have and the way we are going to make it work,” Fajardo said. “Talking to club coaches, motivating players to continue working hard and of course working with my coaching staff  so we can achieve our goals.”

While talking to players is an important part of the offseason, Fajardo said that repetition and continual improvement within the game is paramount to the team’s success.

“Play, play play,” Fajardo said. “A soccer player needs to play, and the more you play the better you will be.”

After losing a large amount of seniors last year, the team will need to make adaptations. Although Fajardo started adapting the team to playing without all the seniors last year, only starting four to five seniors in the lineup, the loss of two division one players and six other seniors will invariably impact the structure of the team. As a replacement for these players, Fajardo is looking for players who perform well under pressure.

“The first week of practice is going to tell me a lot about what and who are we going to be. We have players who are very skilled, so what we will be looking for is for talented players and this is players who are able to apply their skills during the times of pressure,” he said. “Under pressure is where you find talented players and that is what we’ve been looking for since day one.

Open gyms are being held weekly, and tryouts for the team begin the Monday, March 11th after school.