Both Sealy soccer squads kicked off their respective regular seasons this week when the Lady Tigers hosted Bay City Tuesday evening while the Tigers will travel to Bay City Friday evening.

Each of the teams will play three non-district games, as well as a tournament, before the fight for playoff position within District 20-4A begins. The Lady Tigers won their lone scrimmage against Splendora while the Tigers dropped their two scrimmages against 5A opponents.

Neither team was able to finish the regular season last year after the coronavirus pandemic shut down athletics after spring break in March. In a previous interview, head girls’ soccer coach Adrian Rocha said he already instilled the mindset to play every game like it’s their last.

“I already established to them, ‘Get can whatever you can,’” he said on Dec. 21. “They’re going to play whatever opportunity they can. The schedule is likely going to change dramatically; there might be games canceled, there might be times changed, but their mentality is ‘We’re going to do whatever we can and play in every opportunity that we can and display the talent that we have.’”

On the boys’ side, head coach Juan Perez said they were able to learn plenty from their preseason matches against the bigger opponents and looked forward to taking advantage of time on the practice field over the holiday break leading up to Friday’s regularseason opener.

“You see a lot of new faces. It’s not easy because we need to work specifics with specific players,” the head coach said after the Dec. 14 scrimmage. “But we always come out at the end pretty good, and they know I have a lot of faith in them.”

Both the Lady Tigers and Tigers are set to play their first district games in Hempstead on Jan. 22 and the final games are scheduled for March 12 in Brookshire against Royal.