As the fall sports season begins to wrap up, the time to get ready for spring sports has arrived.
Although spring sports tryouts do not begin until January, it is officially preseason time. Some teams that have started preparing for the spring season are lacrosse, baseball and tennis. Preseason practices prepare students interested in learning more about the respective sport or training for the upcoming season.
“Anybody who’s remotely interested in playing lacrosse can show up — it doesn’t matter your grade level or how skilled you are,” senior and Girls Lacrosse player Sara Kramer said. “It’s a really great experience for all girls who are trying to get into the sport.”
No matter the starting position during preseason, the seniors running the practices are always on the look-out for new talent and players who are focused on developing their skills.
“It’s really effort-based because no matter how skilled you are, if you don’t put in effort then obviously nothing’s gonna come out of it,” Kramer said.
Preseason practices are student run, as coaches are not allowed to be involved.
“Every year all of the seniors kind of come together and we are in charge of our preseason planning for each practice and like all the team bonding events that we do before our actual season,” Kramer said.
When planning preseason, those running practices have to keep the entire team in mind.
“We see who we have on the team right now and where we can try and develop everyone to get them ready for spring,” senior and Varsity Baseball player Logan Shapiro said. “Preseason is mainly to look at how people are developing their skills.”
Practices vary from sport-to-sport and day-to-day routines.
“Depending on the day, because a lot of times we will split the practices up, one day will be a defensive day… and then we’ll have a separate day for just hitting and everyone has their separate stations then we’ll have a base running day,” Shapiro said.
Miami Palmetto Senior High’s tennis team won states last year, prepping to live up to the standards of last season for this year.
“We all go to practice as much as we can each week. We practice singles, doubles…We’re just prepping for when we start,” senior and Varsity Girls Tennis player Mia Sorrentino said.
Looking into the season ahead and the competition is also a big part of getting ready for the regular season.
“We look at other teams and their rosters and how their lineups are and then we kind of start building an idea of what our roster will look like,” Sorrentino said.
A great amount of effort is poured into preparing for the spring sports’ regular season to start, and now is as good a time as any to jump into a sport you have always wanted to take a shot at.
