The boys’ varsity soccer team attended a soccer camp with other local high schools from July 31 to Aug. 3 at Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy.

“[The camp] gave me a chance to plan and prepare for the upcoming school year,” Coach Scotty Armstrong said.

The camp consisted of two sessions a day, training from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and an evening scrimmage from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

“[The team] worked on their ability to understand how to pressure in the attacking phase and to see the rotation of players to work off our central forwards,” Armstrong said. “This season we will attack in different ways, so we had to work on these ideas.”

After spending a week back on the field together, members of the varsity team expressed a similar feeling about the camp.

“I feel like it was a good follow-up to last year’s accomplishments and another good step in the right direction,” sophomore Ryan Robidoux said. “Just learning how to be a team again and finding unity [was important] because you can’t win games without good team chemistry.”

The camp allowed the coaches and players to see where they stand compared to last year’s state champions.

“I think we will be a different team. It all depends on the players’ mentality and how we adopt the new philosophy of the team,” Armstrong said. “Everyone needs to be strong mentally. We need to have a strong leadership, and work harder than our opponents.”

The camp gave the returning players and coaches an opportunity  to evaluate the potential new members of the squad.

“I think we’ll get along well,” Robidoux said. “If the new players are willing to learn and get better and the older players continue to learn and grow, then the team will grow well together.”

Armstrong also said the new members will fit in with the returning varsity team.

“They have big shoes to fill,” Armstrong said. “I think they will do well, they got to watch the team have success last year. They seem to understand what it takes to be a part of a great group of players, the important thing is the players come together to set realistic targets.”

The players remain optimistic about the upcoming season, hoping to make it as far as last year when they won the state championship.

“I think we’ll do just fine,” Robidoux said. “Scotty is a huge help, and we’ve learned a lot from him but I have confidence in the rest of our coaching staff as well.”