For many years, Marian has fielded successful teams in a variety of sports.

The Colts and Fillies have won league and district titles in multiple sports over the years, and have captured state championships in football, basketball and volleyball.

Now a new sport is being added. For the first time in the school’s nearly 60-year history, a varsity soccer program will be established for both girls’ and boys’ teams.

Athletic director Peter Sanfilippo, along with interim Head of School Father Allan Hoffa, recently canvassed the student body to determine if there was enough interest to add it to the school’s current list of fall sports, which also includes football, cross-country, golf, and volleyball.

“Last spring, we held Zoom meetings with our administration, our staff, our current students and their families, and families who were considering Marian for their child’s education, and there was a lot of interest in starting a soccer program here,” said Fr. Hoffa.

“Our in-school inquiry resulted in about 16 boys and 16 girls saying they would like to play soccer if the sport came to Marian,” said Sanfilippo. “We are happy to extend our athletic programs to allow more opportunities for our students to be involved outside the classroom.”

However, there are a few challenges ahead that must be faced.

Sanfilippo said that Marian intends to play a full varsity schedule in its inaugural season.

“Some of our students say they have played soccer in club leagues,” explained Fr. Hoffa, “so we didn’t feel we needed to begin playing at the junior varsity level.”

“We have put out inquiries to all the D-11 schools in our travel area, and there is a lot of interest in getting us on their schedules,” said Sanfilippo. “We will play as an independent, and apply for admission into the Schuylkill League for the 2022-2023 season.”

The Colts and Fillies will play their home games at the school’s football stadium. Currently, there are job openings posted for coaches of the boys’ and the girls’ teams.

The fact-finding mission also was to determine if adding soccer to the other fall sports programs would pull numbers of players away from football, cross-country, golf and volleyball.

“We found that those students interested in playing soccer are not currently playing other fall sports,” said Fr. Hoffa, who stated that there would be no tryouts, but workouts will be scheduled once coaching staffs are secured.

As far as what to expect during its first season, Fr. Hoffa was optimistic, but also understands it will take time to forge a highly competitive program.

“We’ll take our bumps and bruises,” he said, “but we should be able to win some games, too.”