{"id":141445,"date":"2021-08-27T12:57:38","date_gmt":"2021-08-27T16:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=141445"},"modified":"2021-08-27T16:05:27","modified_gmt":"2021-08-27T20:05:27","slug":"video-thankful-bobcat-athletes-kick-off-first-practices-of-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2021\/08\/27\/video-thankful-bobcat-athletes-kick-off-first-practices-of-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: &#8216;Thankful&#8217; Bobcat athletes kick off first practices of 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Perhaps the feelings of fall varsity athletes can be summed up by the words on a whiteboard in Alumni Gym, where new head coach Emily Hayes leads the Bates volleyball program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Under the header &#8220;Practice 1&#8221; on Wednesday, it read, &#8220;Thankful.&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;You will hear the same thing from everyone,&#8221; said field hockey forward Emily Gianunzio &#8217;22 of Darien, Conn. &#8220;This is amazing. To be together on the field has been great.&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Bates fall sports teams haven&#8217;t played an actual intercollegiate game since 2019. Last year, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2020\/09\/16\/bates-bobcats-are-a-team\/\">they practiced, but with masks<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video wp-embed-aspect-16-9\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\t\t\t\t<lite-youtube videoid=\"KU8-agYHqcA\" params=\"modestbranding=1&#038;rel=0\" playlabel=\"Welcome back, Bates Bobcats!\" title=\"Welcome back, Bates Bobcats!\" >\n\t\t\t<\/lite-youtube>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<figcaption>Video by Aaron Morse<\/figcaption>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n<p>The first practices of the year were Wednesday. First up was men&#8217;s soccer, which took to the Garcelon Field turf at 7 a.m., the first time without masks in two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Head coach Tyler Sheikh was ready to put his team to the test, with a challenging conditioning session to start the morning off right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s time to kick their butts a little bit,&#8221; said Sheikh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bates men&#8217;s soccer was the first of four practices for fall sports on Wednesday, as the Bobcats get ready for what promises to be a fun <a href=\"https:\/\/gobatesbobcats.com\/calendar\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">2021 campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We were on-hand to capture all the excitement of men&#8217;s soccer, field hockey, women&#8217;s soccer, and volleyball&#8217;s return to action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps the feelings of fall varsity athletes can be summed up by&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":758,"featured_media":141448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[3512,5877,9103,9321],"class_list":["post-141445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","tag-field-hockey","tag-mens-soccer","tag-volleyball","tag-womens-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141445"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141517,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141445\/revisions\/141517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}