“People had to figure out how to do things again, especially being mentally prepared for sports.”

Rafferty Kugler is a standout senior defender on the women’s soccer team. Following an injury that kept her out for her junior year, she has had a strong start to the 2021 season.

Jack Fitzgerald: Can you go over some of the like day-to-day changes in practice or games from last year?

Rafferty Kugler: We have like such close quarters that usually like during games and then practices they only allowed people who were able to physically play. So red shirts usually had to stay out and then people who are injured so like that also included practice. So, in the winter, especially like when we practice upstairs in our gym on the turf, we only have 20 people in there at a time, so a lot of people were just sitting out in the hallway. It’s pretty sad honestly, especially because I couldn’t go in and watch even though I wasn’t playing. It kind of felt pretty isolating.

Could you go into what it means this year to be able to play in front of friends and family again?

Especially for me like being out for a full year it makes you appreciate the sport so much more and being able to have my family come like they didn’t come to any of the games in the spring. Especially just because I wasn’t playing and it’s a long trip for them. It meant so much more to me now because, I worked so hard to be back. Being able to have people there like, especially from the student body, other athletes and then now having people living on campus more. It’s so much more special to have people at our games and supporting us, especially because we’re doing so well right now. Yeah, we’ve had a lot of like a great turn out in the last couple of games, especially against Madison. So, yes, I’m very glad that we’re able to have people there again.

Did you see a change in mental health, either yourself, or went on the team just in general over last year compared to other years?

Yeah, so usually it’s nothing that’s on our radar, and then during our COVID season, like during the fall and all that we had off, which was like our offseason then. The spring that we had our season. It was more of a focus especially because everyone was doing online school, we implemented things like coded like check-ins that were anonymous. One of our teammates would send out a survey and you would check like in which zone you are in for that week. So, like you right code red, it was like you were doing super bad and there was black that was like even worse and then, it was like yellow, green, and white and like those were all just to like, see how people were doing.

At first, we did them where you could see everybody’s names and we had a lot more positive answers than we thought was real and then as we started to be more anonymous the numbers showed like really, how much people were struggling. Especially you could tell that it was more the girls who weren’t able to come in for practice because they were either red shirted or injured and they couldn’t travel and stuff like that.

I don’t know. It was really hard for people, I think, to adjust to a new way of doing things after we as a program had done things so similarly, year after year. We had our traditions, had our schedules and then, with this hiccup it was like, people had to figure out how to do things again, especially being mentally prepared for sports and then mentally prepared for school or being so isolated from each other, not being able to see each other. I’m just rambling now so I don’t know.

We’re seeing a lot of people talk about how students went through such a tough year last year. Had so much more on their plate than normal. What’s your perspective on that as an athlete?

We could only see the people we live with. College is a very social time and we also weren’t able to see other athletes and the only time we could is in the training room and if we see them in the K like and we also aren’t in here ever, so it’s hard. It was really hard, especially I think for the incoming freshmen who had no sort of like social aspect with the older girls at all. We did like basically no team bonding because we weren’t allowed to and the only time we were able to be together were like outdoor meals and in the spring is pretty cold so.