As the winter blues come to an end, the spring season approaches, and so does the spring sports season.
“The preseason basically began the day after baseball ended. There was never a time throughout the year that I wasn’t practicing my skills or working on something,” senior Brock Kiner said.
Athletes can choose whether they want to put in the extra work or not when it comes to the off season, and Kiner says he does.
“I would usually do something baseball related twice a week on my own,” Kiner said. “Once baseball practices for North started, it was closer to four times a week.”
The work one puts into the off-season correlates with the work you put into the in season, so that’s why the off season is important for many players.
The practices in the off-season are usually about technique, with workouts and general technique things.
“For the North practices, it generally consists of an arm workout, throwing/fielding, and hitting to round it off,” Kiner said. Kiner also does his own work that helps him in the regular season as well.
“On my own I do agility once or twice a week for an hour and hitting in the cages once a week for 45 minutes,” Kiner said.
Kiner says it’s hard at first, but then it gets easier as the workouts progress.
“At the start, the workouts are never easy but, if you are consistent and work like you should, they get easier and easier,” Kiner said.
Junior Ashton Schwartz explains what the most difficult part of the preseason is for him.
“Some of our athletes play two or even three sports. In some cases, some are really tired after a long day of practice and school,” Schwartz said.
Attendance is something that all sports struggle with when it comes to the preseason.
“Some just have to miss practice because their in- season sport is taking priority, the lack of attendance is making us fill holes in spots where the athletes play,” Schwartz said.
“I feel like a lot of our players really get to know one another during the preseason, and this helps us play better,” Schwartz said.
“It’s more like a brotherhood in a way, like we know our strengths and weaknesses, so we help one another.”
Many people have goals in the preseason that do end up transferring over to the actual season, and with Kiner’s senior year coming up, he wants to leave everything out there.
“My main goal this season is to make it as far as possible in the postseason, and knowing that everyone left everything they had out on the field. Even if we do come up short,” Kiner said. “I want to know that everyone did everything they could to win that game. At that point, I would be okay with a loss because we did everything we could.”
