After successfully bringing the JR community together with the lunch basketball league, the Jackson-Reed Student Government Association (SGA), wasted no time with their next move: the Futsal tournament.  

Now what is Futsal? Futsal is simply indoor soccer, with a far smaller pitch and smaller goals, which creates a more fast-paced and intense game. In the SGA tournament, each team played preliminary matches starting at the end of March, which carried on until spring break. The round of 16 was held on April 11 with the quarterfinals on April 25, and then the semifinals and finals on April 26 along with the champions playing a special game against the SGA staff that same day. 

“It feels very different from normal soccer because the field is a lot smaller, so you really have to pass the ball well,” said sophomore Jonah Beers, of the team Naught Opossums. “It really helps to be physical on the smaller field.” 

While the SGA soccer tournament has been a hit, there is still room for improvement. “They could make the tournament itself longer going forward, like how basketball was, [However], everything was fine other than that,” Beers added.

 How did this tournament come to be? As mentioned before, the SGA realized they wanted to continue doing tournaments at lunch after the success of the basketball tournament. A contributing member to the creation of the tournament was math teacher,  Rudi Feiler, a member of the SGA, who runs a soccer club. He realized this was the perfect opportunity. Ms. Gearhardt, an Italian teacher who is an advisor of the SGA, also played a large role in organizing the tournament, “It didn’t take too long to organize this one because we already learned a lot from the basketball tournament, like how often the games should be played and how to make the schedule.” If the Futsal tournament works out as well as winter basketball did, the SGA is also planning a flag football tournament on the field next year, so come out and support your friends and classmates!