By Max Braunig
Photo by Max Braunig
As the winter sports season begins, players on teams are beginning to lock in on their practices and preparing for competitions and games. This also means that student athletes will have less time to do homework and studying because of the increase in practices after school.
With a 19-3-3 record last season, the Willow soccer team looks to make it to state this year after a hard loss in the semi finals to Ben Franklin last year. The team will be working extra hard in practice to prepare for the season.
The timing of practices especially create challenges for players.
“Timing definitely creates problems because soccer practice for varsity goes from 7-9 pm for all 4 months of the season,” said Oliver Morse, a senior and the soccer team captain at Willow. “The team and I have to be diligent and make sure to do our work when we go home from school because if someone waits and does it after practice, there’s a less likely chance that it will get done or that it will be done the right way and not sloppy.”
Freshman Kengo Higashi said, “When practice is early, I have less time to study because I have to go to bed afterwards,” said Kengo, “However, when practice is later at nigh,t I have more time to do homework in between practice and school. Sometimes if I have less time, I will use flash cards in the car or at home to help me study.”
Some players have trouble with managing their time, while others think that it is not a problem balancing the two. “In the past, it has created challenges for sure, but now, being a senior, our workload is a little lighter than in the past, so now I can enjoy soccer a lot more than constantly stressing about having a lot of homework to do when I get home,” said senior Simon Promoslovsky.
Sometimes, JV players can have different experiences with time to do work than the experiences of varsity players because JV tends to have a little less practice time than varsity players.
“I think it will be different for the JV players this year because they won’t have practice every day of the week,” said Morse,” but for varsity, we do have a lot more games, so that might give us less time to do our work than the JV guys.”
Soccer players have to be smart how the spend their time not practicing, so people use different techniques.
“The timing of practices and games sometimes do affect my routine and studying time, but I work around it by shutting off my electronics and putting full focus onto my schoolwork before going to bed,” said sophomore Dylan Minogue.
To some players, it is easy to manage time for studying after or before practice, but for some people, it can be more difficult due to timing and focus. This creates challenges, but the players have to make sacrifices and simply work around games and practices during the season. Whether it’s shutting off electronics, using flashcards, or staying up late to do homework, soccer players put school first in their student athlete mindsets and find ways to get their work done no matter what.
