Kicking into Gear

Winter sports run head first into their 2016-2017 seasons.

Sophia Day

As fall sports come to a close and teams begin to finish their playoff season, winter sports have begun.

The sports taking place during the winter season include girls and boys basketball, wrestling and boys and girls soccer.

Although their seasons are officially beginning, the teams have been preparing for months now through team bonding, conditioning and practices during off season.

The basketball teams will play this Thursday and Friday, along with soccer against Bella Vista and Vacaville and wrestling will compete in their first match on Saturday.

Varsity girls basketball has been conditioning a few days out of the week for the last month. Senior Captain Nicole Cartan, has led the team through difficult workouts and even yoga sessions to try and get the team prepped for the season.

Boys and girls soccer have been conditioning to prepare for the difficult tryout process that began on Monday, November 7.

“For the first four weeks of summer we conditioned Monday through Thursday for two hours a day,” says three year returning senior Kyle Watkins. “Now we are in the middle of tryouts… the first day of tryouts was tough because we ran and did sprints the entire time.”

Grayson Romig, another returning senior says, “Our summer conditioning will all be worth the work we put in because this season will be one everyone will want to come out and watch.”

This year, for the first time, soccer will take place in the winter rather than the fall. The reason the school has chosen to do this was the players conflicting club soccer schedules. A great amount of kids were not able to participate in years past because of their club teams. In addition, high school soccer is nationally played in the winter and Rocklin decided it was time to make the switch.

Some athletes have even gone straight from fall sports to the winter season with hardly any break. Senior Brian Horn had played varsity football this last fall and not even a week after, was thrown straight into his wrestling season. He has had to balance practices as they began to overlap. With varsity wrestling practices beginning months ago during football season, he was unable to practice and prep for the wrestling season.

“I would just help coach if I had time,” says Horn, “I’ve been running and lifting instead.”

Although the transition has been difficult, Horn says he is excited to see what is to come this wrestling season.

With the extensive preparation and hard work put forth, we can expect great things this season from all our winter sports teams.