Owen Loughlin #13, plays mid-center for both the Real club and the school. Loughlin plays for Real Olympica and played for the C-Level in the 2018 season.

     “It was our off-season from club soccer so I thought I’d keep in shape by playing,” Loughlin said. “If you want to play year-round, you have to be on DA(DA is the US Soccer Development Academy) team. Which is the highest level team and you go to a lot of tournaments for college scouting. If you’re on DA then you can’t play high school because you sign a contract to only play club.”

     Loughlin plays for the Spring season of Real Olympica. The practices began in March and the season’s Championship is in May. Practices start before the season so games have not begun yet. There are 8-10 games in a season and one game ever weekend. Tournaments can also go on after the season ends.

     During their practices, the coach would normally talk for about five minutes, then they run drills for 40, do possession for 40 and scrimmage for the rest of practice. Practices start at 7:30 and go to 9:10-9:20. Similar to the school team, C-Level ran drills and possession after the boys changed out after school. But for the high school team, they had 5:00 am workouts in the summer.

     “Some days we just gotta run,” Loughlin said.

     For Real Olympica, there are many kids on the team so that makes it very competitive for who gets put on the field to play.

     “We have 20 players on or team so two kids can’t dress out-if you don’t do well during practice, you can’t dress out for the game,” Loughlin said.

     Real Olympica goes on out-of-state tournaments and where they can view college campuses. They get to play for 2-3 days for out-of-state tournaments then arrive back on the Sunday before school would start the week over again.

     “Basically you just get dropped off and we rent a truck, you ride with your teams, chill in the hotel, and go out to eat. When we went to Salt Lake City for Regionals. It was cool because since it was for regionals they had really nice grass fields. We did a couple college tours when we weren’t playing,” Loughlin said.

      But with all this work and practice, how does Loughlin find time for homework and other school activities?

     “Usually if I have homework nights I have practice, I usually do it during access so I can hang out with people. And go to bed at 9:30,” Loughlin said.

     Playing for a high school and for a club are actually very different.

     “I think Real soccer is a lot more technical and more on skill and high school soccer is more physical,” Loughlin said. But Loughlin is planning to play next year for the 2019 Boys Soccer season.