This year has not been the ideal year for student athletes. With cancellation on this year’s season, the girls volleyball team faced a lot of uncertainty for their season as far as how much they would be able to do and how much they would be able to see their teammates. Luckily for COVID testing and the athletic department’s efforts making everything as safe as possible, the team is excited to be somewhat back to normal.

            “As an athletic department I feel like we’re doing a tremendous job making sure we’re able to safely return to the gym,” said Head Coach Stacy Boudreau.

            At the start of the school year the team had a time where they were very limited when it came to practices and being in the gym. The return back to practices started off slow and they held what they call “position practices” which where they would have practices in small groups. Recently the team has made the transition to being able to add a few full team practices.

            The team is in the gym four days a week and training with strength and conditioning coaches. They have also been continuing their position practices in addition to their couple of team practices a week.

            Even though their 2020 season has been cancelled, the team is still looking at the positives and taking this time as an opportunity to keep training and working hard to improve on their skills.

            “We can use this entire year to get better, to focus on anything we want to and hopefully mark down a bunch of our goals that we’ve had for a while,” said Sophomore athlete Johni Bunkers.

            The cancellation of their 2020 season has caused the team to not be as stressed about making errors and getting more comfortable to try new things.

            “This is the best time for us to make errors because we can learn how to fix them,” said Bunkers.

            Even though this season was not ideal for the team they are optimistic and hoping for a season next year and are planning come back stronger and better than ever.

On Saturday people from all over town took advantage of the nice weather to visit All Seasons Apple Orchard in Woodstock, Illinois.

All Seasons Apple Orchard had a successful weekend with people all over town gathering for some fall activities. From apple picking to shopping in the farm market, people are really starting to get into the Fall festivities. It was also their first weekend with their pumpkin patch open and ready for people to pick from.

“My boyfriend and I had a really nice date today, we picked a lot of apples and got a lot of desserts from their store,” said Woodstock resident Carley MacDonnell.

At the orchard people are able to go out and pick their own apples with their families and friends, or you can purchase a bag in their farm market that were picked by employees. The farm market also provides caramel apples and bake goods from the bakery right inside the farm market. There are many options when it comes to caramel apples in their store. You can have your classic plain apple or one covered in peanuts, but there are also some special ones. There are apples covered in sprinkles, chocolate, different types of candies and more.

“My family and I went to their store to pick up some fall treats and there were so many options to choose from,” said customer Lauren Nicholson

All Seasons Apple Orchard provides a lot of fun fall activities for people of all ages and are doing all of this safely with the current pandemic. Upon entry it is required customers wear masks and they make sure everything is sanitized and clean. They are also only allowing a specific number of customers in the orchard to help with social distancing.

For more information on all the activities All Seasons provides you can find one their website here: https://allseasonsorchard.com/ . You can skip the line and reserve your tickets and learn about all the fun activities you can do there.

All Seasons provides day to day updates on their Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/AllSeasonsAppleOrchard/ . They provide their updates on the orchard due to weather, capacity and new activities and events that are occurring that weekend.

With the temperatures finally dropping, Fall feels like it has finally arrived. All the activities that you can do at All Seasons Apple Orchard really is getting the town into the Fall spirit.