Coach Muirhead is hosting a meeting for all players and families on Thursday, March 7, at 7pm in the auditorium. Current players and 8th graders planning to try out over the summer should attend.
The coaching staff will review details of the upcoming season and will be taking questions. Before attending, please review this document.
Coach Muirhead has shared his annual letter for players intending to try out for boys soccer at Columbia in August.
Please read carefully as there will be significant changes to tryouts this year. Some important dates:
In case you missed the email, here are the tryout details from Coach Muirhead:
Hello Cougar Soccer Families,
I just wanted to send you all an email highlighting our tryout and preseason period as I know even though I have shared this information with your son(s), it may not have made it back to you yet. Below is our schedule for the week of August 21st and how things work. Additionally, a quick note regarding medical clearances – I know some of you have been CC’ing me on emails to our athletic trainer regarding player clearance, the clearance list has remained largely unchanged for the past month due to Vanessa not being a 12 month employee, however, with football now underway, she is back and working on the medical paperwork – please keep an eye on your emails in case she reaches out regarding a missing form/signature. I will post updated clearance lists on our Google classroom and Group Me as they begin to accumulate.
Monday 8/21
AM Fitness (2 Mile Run)
The run takes place on the track up at Underhill, please make sure you are in sneakers, headphones, music, pacing devices are all fine to use during the run.
The posted time above is when your son should be there to check in, the run will start 10 mins after check in time.
Our target time is 12 minutes, the run will be terminated after 15 minutes
After each grade level completes their run, they are free to go until we come back for the evening session.
Evening Session
Tuesday 8/22
UpperClassmen Have a Double Session
Wednesday 8/23
AM Fitness
This morning fitness will take place on RITZER FIELD (behind CHS)
The posted time above is the START time for the fitness evaluation
This evaluation measures push ups, broad jump, shuttle run time, sprint time and timed dribbles through cones.
After each grade level completes their assessment, they are free to go until the evening evaluation period.
Evening Session
What comes next…
By 10:30pm on Wednesday night every player will receive an email to their student email address, the email will either say congratulations, we are offering you a spot in the program this season, practice is at this time and this place tomorrow – or the other email that will go out is that unfortunately we are not able to offer you a spot this year, if you are interested in being a manager for the team (helps coaches with practices, participates in practice when the opportunity arises and helps coaches with stats during games) please let us know, additionally we encourage players to reach out and to set up a meeting with the coaching staff the following week so that we can provide a more in depth overview of their evaluation and how they can improve.
Why the email method – this was adopted as a recommendation from the athletic department leading into the covid period (in lieu of posting names on a board or calling the kids in one at a time), this coupled with the growth in the soccer program (we have 98 players who gave me their name for tryouts this fall) plus a condensed preseason schedule courtesy of the njsiaa (more on that shortly) has made it almost impossible to sit down with 30-40 players one at a time immediately following the final tryout. Additionally, making reductions is the worst part of this job and having been cut before myself (high school basketball) I know it’s never easy to digest from the player’s side either, which is why we recommend the meeting the following week for players who want to follow up on their evaluation.
The Preseason…
Practices for all levels begin the next day so there will be practice Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The NJSIAA requires 6 practices and a day of rest before a player is eligible to participate in a scrimmage. Our first scrimmage is the following Monday 8/28 so a player must be at all 3 days of tryouts, plus the following three days of practices to be eligible to play on Monday. For those of you trying to plan one last get away before school starts, our schedule for the end of August looks like this:
…. Pretty crazy, but with the four scrimmages and days off, we only get 7 days of practices between the last day of tryouts and the first game of the regular season. Everything moves very very quickly once we are underway.
There will be a player and parent meeting on the evening of Friday August 25th, location TBD (pending access to the high school) where we will discuss more and answer any questions, but hopefully this email should take care of most of the pressing issues.
-Coach Muirhead
Columbia High School
Business Teacher
Varsity Baseball Coach
Varsity Soccer Coach
Coach Muirhead and the Columbia High School coaching staff will run two soccer camps in August.
The first, from Aug. 7-10, will be for rising 8th and 9th graders. The second, from Aug. 14-17, will be for rising 10th-12th graders.
Both camps will run 9am to 1pm Monday to Thursday on Ritzer Field, and the fee is $280 with a 50% discount for siblings.
Follow the links below to learn more and register.
Interested in playing boys soccer at Columbia High School next year? If so, come out and meet the coaches and our booster organization on the evening of March 14. The coaching staff will share everything you need to know about the high school program. If you have questions, please submit them through this Google form before the meeting.
Who: Any 8th grader (and parents) interested in playing Boys Soccer at CHS next year. Seventh graders who are interested in what’s to come are equally welcome to join.
When: Tuesday, March 14, 7:15pm
Where: The Black Box Theater at Columbia High School
Thanks to Ben Niles for putting together this look back at all three teams’ seasons!
Hello 8th Grade Families,
My name is Coach Muirhead and I wanted to reach out to all of you in regards to your sons’ participation in the high school soccer program at Columbia High School. I’ve had a few parents already email me regarding tryouts/vacation/etc… so I figured it was best to put together this correspondence.
Tryouts for this fall will begin on Monday August 22nd. Tryouts typically last four days, although this does vary depending on the number of players that come out for the team. Two years ago we had 110 players tryout and we ended up going 5 days to make sure we got a good look at everyone. Last year the number was 87 players and we ended up making our decisions in 4 days.
I will detail more “tryout prep” below – once tryouts are completed we immediately roll into our preseason which takes us right up to our first game on Friday 9/9/22.
“The Columbia High School Boys Soccer team entered their 2021 season ripped by the tragic loss of teammate Moussa Fofana, but the team honored Fofana’s memory by lifting their game to new heights.
Led by head coach Ryan Muirhead, the team finished with an 11-7 record, including winning the Super Essex Conference–Liberty Division championship with a 6-1 division record. As a result, the Cougars will be promoted to the SEC–American Division for next season — the top division in the conference — marking the second year in a row that CHS has been promoted within the conference…”
