Summer Sports Update
When summer vacation begins, so does summer training and, for Varsity athletes, this is the time to get ready for the upcoming season. Each sports team has its own specific way of training to help them achieve their goals.
Cameron Rising, junior and starting quarterback for the Varsity football team, described his summer routine going into the 2016-17 football season as consistent and hopeful.
“(I am) constantly working, making sure I get my body right. I made sure I put on a lot of pounds, so I could take more hits and get up faster. I just tweaked all the small things that I needed to work on,” Rising said.
Anastasia Kimball, junior, discussed the volleyball training schedule and its logistics.
“We had a tryout in May of last year and then we started training Aug. 1. We did agility training in the morning, and then specific position training in the afternoon,” Kimball said. “Then we just practiced as a team.”
As a team, the volleyball girls came to focus on their weaknesses to better eliminate them.
“Our team wanted to get better at serve receive, because that was our weak point, but we’re getting a lot better at it,” Tasia said.
Players on the water polo team also practiced extensively outside of school.
“On off weeks I would go to a YMCA pool and find an open lane to keep my conditioning on. Sometimes me and some of my teammates (would) go to the gym and lift weights and get stronger in order to get better at water polo,” Jarrod Norton, sophomore, said.
The team’s main focus this year is to win CIF, and Norton thinks that the team has the potential to win. Every team wants to make CIF, but Norton and the rest of the team have been putting in the work to achieve this goal.
Varsity girls have amped up their training to be ready for the tennis season this year.
“I am part of this (camp) at CLU that is called an elite camp and it’s just like a clinic too,” Angelina Powers, sophomore, said.
Powers practices for hours at a time, but when it comes to personal goals for Powers, she wants to try scoring faster so the match won’t drag out.
“I want to be more aggressive at the net. (I want to get) points over the net and (finish) them, before they drag on too long and I get tired,” said Powers.
Sonia Patel, senior, this year’s captain for girl’s golf, explained the long practice schedule during the summer.
“Over the summer, starting in August, we had practice rounds on the golf course, and then we had practice at the driving range about every day, for two or three hours, just to get ready for the season,” Patel said.
Cross country also stepped up their game this summer. Marty Maciel, the head coach of the cross country team, has been pushing the the athletes to their limits in order to get them ready for the season.
“We took eleven kids up to Mammoth and we were there for about five days,” Maciel said. “The purpose of the summer program is to get these kids working as a team; that’s the one thing that’s been missing. They’ve been friends and they have a good time and they enjoy one another. But there hasn’t been a very close friendship, so over the summer that was one of the key things we really wanted to work on.”
From practice rounds to bonding activities, the sports teams have recharged their spirits to bring their best efforts forward for the upcoming year.
“We have potential to get ahead,” Maciel said. “I think we’re ready.”
