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The greenest expanse in snow-covered St. Louis on Monday may well have been the training fields at City SC’s practice facility.

Thanks to a plumbing system that allows the grounds crew to run warm water through the pipes under the fields, the two training fields at CityPark were free of snow, even while the temperatures were in the low 20s for City SC’s first practice of training camp and the first under new coach Olof Mellberg.

Midfielder Cedric Teuchert wore shorts.

“It’s a hard run,� the native of Germany said after practice. “It’s getting hot faster, so I chose the short shorts.�

So cold weather doesn’t bother him?

“No, it’s really cold,� he said.

Teuchert was one of a handful of players who hit the field with bare legs, while most everyone else opted for jackets, stocking caps and whatever other cold-weather gear they could find as Season 3 for City SC got off to a chilly start on Monday. It was 22 degrees when the team hit the practice field for the first time under Mellberg around 11 a.m., and the team did fitness testing and drills a little over an hour.

Mellberg is still getting to know most of his players, and his players are still getting to know him. The conversations so far have been in that vein, rather than lofty strategy discussions.

“We’ve only trained once so far,� said midfielder Eduard Lowen, who came into St. Louis on the same flight as Mellberg and sat with him at a Blues game that night. “We had a lot of conversations here and there, but it was more like life-related and all of that. So far, very good, but we’ll see. We are all looking forward to work with him and see how he can improve us. We are excited.�

“He’s a nice guy. He’s a good coach,� Teuchert said. “We talked for some minutes. I think all of us are excited to be with the coach, to have new sessions, new exercises and then start the season.�

Even before camp opened, City SC ran into injury issues. Left back Jayden Reid, who had a run as the starting left back before the arrival of Jannes Horn late last season, suffered a broken foot in a pre-camp training session at home in New York that required surgery and will sideline him for three months. That puts his return around the start of April.

Reid started the season with City2 and got his chance at left back at midseason and won the job from Anthony Markanich. The acquisition of Horn dropped Reid to the backup spot, but his play earned him a contract for this season and led to City SC trading Markanich to Minnesota.

Also not on the field were midfielder Chris Durkin, who is working through the knee issues that kept him out at the end of last season, and midfielder Jake Girdwood-Reich, who had been doing some rehab back home in Australia before coming to St. Louis. Defender Tomas Totland and midfielder Nokkvi Thorisson are still in Europe and due in by the end of the week.

Celio Pompeu, coming back from a dislocated ankle and a fractured fibula, ran drills with the team but worked separately with a trainer when the team moved into short-field games. Tomas Ostrak, coming back from an ankle injury, was not on the field.

City SC will be in St. Louis for only a week before heading to Florida, where all this will quickly become a memory. But that doesn’t change anything in the present.

“Very, very cold,� said Lowen. “I’m just excited. We got the all the tests, all the medicals behind us now, and now we can look forward to full training sessions and focus on what we like.�

The worst part of the first day is the Bronco, a shuttle run to measure aerobic fitness which requires players to do a lot of running back and forth.

“My lung was burning like 15, 20 minutes after the Bronco,� Lowen said, “so it wasn’t so much fun. We got the Bronco done now, so the fun part is coming now, and I’m looking forward to that.

“The Bronco is suffering. That’s it, suffering and being able to suffer, and to maintain a good pace. And I think something like that is good, because, not only in preseason, in soccer, that’s one of the things: You have to be disciplined. You have to be professional. You have to be able to suffer. Because if you don’t learn to suffer in a really hard way, you’re not going to do it in the game, so these type of tests, nobody likes it. But that’s also important.�

And important to get going after an almost unheard of three-month soccer offseason.

“For me, it was a really long time,� Teuchert said. “In Europe, we have maximum five weeks off. Now we had double the time to spend with the family. I think it’s the most important thing to go back in to shape, go back on the pitch, make some good sessions, some good preseason games.�