Every player got a word, a blindfold and a partner.
It was the middle of September and all 24 members of the South Hadley girls soccer team were doing a team bonding game on their field before a match in the regular season.
The objective: While blindfolded, find your partner only by moving toward the sound of their pre-selected word.
There was a lot of yelling, laughing and results were mixed, but that wasn’t really what mattered.
“Being on a sports team isn’t just about the work,” South Hadley co-captain Maddie Doolittle said. “It’s about how enjoyable it is. No one is going to want to play soccer if the team environment isn’t great. (Coach Rich Marjanski) instills it in us to focus and put in the work so we can have fun.”
The Tigers have been a model of consistency over the last three years. The team hasn’t lost a regular season game in two years and have won three straight Division 3 Western Massachusetts championships.
Getting to that point takes hard work, but Marjanski believes that having fun along the way is a big part of the team’s success.
“I think he spends a lot of time researching team bonding games,” said South Hadley co-captain Lindsay Marjanski, who is Rich’s daughter. “We play kickball and a lot of team sport games too. He’s been able to compile a lot (of activities) over the years. Each year we do a mix of old ones and new ones.”
The team likes to record its team bonding exercises, group dinners and bus rides, and post the videos on their Instagram page. Doolittle runs the Instagram page and junior Paige Marjanski, also Rich’s daughter, coordinates the team’s Twitter account. The team also has a TikTok page where they post team dance videos and short skits.
Using social media to showcase what the program does together off the field has served as another way for the team to have fun and preserve memories.
“It’s cool to look back and see how we’ve grown. It’s like a memory book,” Doolittle said.
The balance between fun and work is delicate, but Rich Marjanski has found that asking a lot from the team early in the season has helped set the tone for the months ahead.
“I told them at the beginning (of the year), ‘You’re not going to like me,” Rich Marjanski said. “You need to grow some thick skin if you don’t have it, but after those three to four weeks, you’re going to have fun and it’s going to be a great year.’ That’s how we handle things. We start out hard early, but then we have some fun. … We keep it light, but we got pretty hard.”
The drilling and conditioning to open the season can be grueling for some, but reaping the rewards on the other side has made it worth it for players.
“In the beginning of the season during games (coach) focuses a lot on little mistakes,” Doolittle said. “He tries to fine-tune our play, almost like a machine. … He’s kind of scary in the beginning of the season for new people, but once you get past it and learn how to take criticism and fix mistakes, we become a much better team.”
The Tigers have one piece of work left to do this Saturday when they take on Stoneham in the state championship, 5 p.m. at Foley Stadium in Worcester.
But before they do that, they have another team bonding exercise planned.
Every member of the team is going to randomly select the name of a teammate out of a hat and write that person a message. Each player will get their message on the bus ride to the state championship.
“It’s huge. It connects us,” Lindsay Marjanski said about the team’s bonding activities. “We step onto the field and know that we are going to stick together no matter the outcome.”