Swift Current Minor Soccer is back into competitive action this week.

With the announcement in May that team sports competition would be moved up to step one of the province's reopening plan, the Swift Current Soccer Association had to adapt on short notice.

Chad Striker is the Technical Director with the SCSA. He says that the planning for the eventual return began at the beginning of the season.

"This year we usually have our under 9's and under 11's on the same field. We didn't do that this year so we have each age group at a different location and that allowed us to take in registrations so we could have multiple time slots at different locations. Now that we're allowed to have games, we can collapse some of those time slots and put two teams on a field."

Hearing the news that team competitive play was being allowed, after a previous season of drills and non-contact play, Strikers said that the players were excited to be able to get back to some semblance of normal.

"The kids were super excited to just be able to scrimmage or do some two on twos or three on threes, just any competitive piece. They were pretty excited about that."

Striker added that while they could have begun play on May 31st, immediately after the return to competitive play came into effect. But instead, the association chose to take an extra week to make their plans and ensure that they could be flexible going forward.

While the season will be shortened a little bit, he said that he did reach out to other communities to see about interest in more league play, he felt that due to some lingering COVID hesitancy, this year's season may be limited to more local play.

"I've put a bit of feelers out to neighbouring communities in regard to our competitive players. But there's a little bit of hesitation to start travelling. So I kind of see this spring staying in Swift Current and then hopefully in the indoor season we get back to have a more competitive season that also travels."