From the football team’s 6 a.m. workouts to the 12:30 a.m. conclusion of rugby practice, Oberlin athletes have been working around the clock — and many of them aren’t even in season.
But obstacles abound: snow-covered fields, tightly-scheduled facilities, Winter Term travelers and National Collegiate Athletic Association bylaws compel players and coaches to search for creative solutions.
As always, the Ohio weather failed to cooperate with spring athletes, dumping several inches of snow on the ground, keeping temperatures in the teens, and forcing the outdoor sports inside.
This creates a highly charged, jam-packed atmosphere in Jones Fieldhouse for much of the month. By and large, athletes are accepting of the scheduling difficulties and adjust their schedules accordingly, though some gripes linger.
According to sophomore captain Magdalen Dale, she and her rugby teammates “can’t tackle in the fieldhouse — we’d get horrible carpet burn.”
Her remedy?
“We have tackling practice in the snow,” she said.
The four spring sports that require the fieldhouse (men’s and women’s lacrosse, baseball and softball) rotate for practice times from 4:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. on weekdays in shifts, with fall sports, club sports and intramurals snapping up the leftover slots.
Field hockey and softball player sophomore Jaime Johnson summed it up best.
“Everyone wants to practice in Jones,” she said.
As a club, rugby has to select from the “reject” times, “so we practice from 11-12:30 Monday and Wednesday night,” Dale said.
Sometimes even the “choice” slots aren’t so top-notch, according to first-year lacrosse player Beth Sebian.
“This week we had the slot from 5:15 p.m. to 7:30,” she said. “There was no way for us to get dinner. It’s an outrage. We invest so much time – CDS should be flexible with us.”
Senior softball captain Maria Balducci is “excited to get outside, the sooner the better.”
“It’s difficult in February, especially on our individual schedules,” she said. “But even indoors we can focus on specific aspects of the game, especially hitting with the batting cages and pitching machine. Of course, fielding drills are difficult with the Astroturf. But it’s definitely a good time for the team to bond.”
“Softball requires a lot of space,” teammate Johnson added. “It’s pretty hard to play indoors. Last week we had two practices at six in the morning, which wasn’t so bad, except unfortunately I didn’t change my sleep schedule to accommodate.”
The person in charge of delegating field times, Director of Recreational Sports Betsy Bruce, strives to be flexible.
“I try to accommodate everybody and be as fair as I can,” she said.
Despite this, she does occasionally receive complaints, like when she cut varsity practices by 15 minutes in order to find late-night practice time for club sports.
“I know that coaches would rather have two hours for practice, but people in club sports pay tuition just like everyone else,” she said. “You just have to be creative.”
Such on-the-spot resourcefulness has proved rewarding for Bruce. “[Wednesday] night I realized that one of the sports was done early so I sent out an email to the men’s ultimate team telling them that they could have some extra practice time,” she said. “In a about two minutes I got a thank-you message back from some of them.”
She also emphasizes that despite the tight scheduling, Oberlin athletes are fortunate in the range and amount of athletic facilities.
“People don’t realize how lucky we are,” she said. “Take, for example, another school in the conference, the College of Wooster. Their athletic building is about the same age as ours, but they have no indoor track, no fieldhouse like Jones and no indoor tennis courts.”
Johnson stresses, though, the importance of the few weeks of preseason training, whether indoors or out.
“Last season in field hockey we started practice a week late because we had a new coach,” she said. “It was problematic. That time is essential for getting in shape and getting acclimated to the sport so you can stay competitive with the rest of the conference.”
While January elsewhere in the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) saw athletes return to school and readapt to training routines, Winter Term engaged many Oberlin athletes in far corners of the globe. Despite the long break, ways to keep competitive with the rest of the conference remained at the forefront of many athletic minds.
Some, like lacrosse coach Deb Ranieri, thus opted to create workout plans for players to complete on their own in January, wherever they may have been.
“Over Winter Term, coach gave us a workout involving lifting, cardio and stick work,” Sebian said. “That way, we could gradually build up over January so when we came back to campus we’d be in shape, and we wouldn’t have to waste practice time getting fit.”
Conditioning thus comprises the bulk of most athletes’ regimens. Members of the baseball team who stayed on campus played two hours of baseball each day in January, in addition to weight-lifting and running every other day.
“We’re now one of the most in-shape teams I’ve seen,” senior Zachary Pretzer said.
Others formed personal routines based on their schedules and skills they wished to enhance.
As January drew to a close, first-year lacrosse player Will Jaffee began to taper off lifting and do more running, in addition to other things.
“I also played a lot of squash,” he said. “All the short quick movements really help footwork, which I think is an understressed yet huge part of lacrosse.”
Johnson enjoys a similarly ecletic workout.
“I run every day, pretty regularly, and after the run, I do lifting at the gym, time-permitting,” she said. “Usually I just use certain machines that I like. I’m also in life-guarding, so I go swim-conditioning a couple times a week.”
Such self-motivation aids athletes during the winter months, since NCAA regulations limit the official offseason involvement of coaches with their teams. For fall sports, this dictates that, excepting a period of several weeks later in the spring, all offseason training sessions are strictly voluntary.
According to junior football captain Mark Lengel, every one of his teammates has volunteered to attend the captain-facilitated winter workouts.
“It’s partly a team camaraderie thing,” he said. “So the captains got together and looked at schedules to see when everyone could make it. As in the past, that happened to be three shifts at 6:00, 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning.”
The football team’s regimen includes a gym component, involving both agility and power drills like cutting, and time in the weight room.
The weight-lifting program, according to Lengel, consists of “low reps, many sets and high weights,” and is based on percentages. Early on, each player tested to determine the maximum weight they could handle.
“You always start at a low percentage of weight on the first set,” he said, “then keep building up to higher percentages until you reach your max on each exercise.”
Other teams have sought to stay sharp but maintain the more relaxing nature of the offseason via fun drills or competitions.
“The lacrosse team would scrimmage every Saturday night during Winter Term,” Jaffee said. “It was kinda strange, but a cool way to kick off Saturday night.”
The Blake Indoor Soccer League (BISL), so-called after their coach, Blake New, has fostered friendly rivalries amongst the members of the Oberlin soccer team.
“It’s pretty competitive,” first-year David Wilson said of the four-team league, which plays 30-minute games every Sunday afternoon. “Some guys have jerseys. And there’s going to be a prize at the end for the champion, given at the coach’s discretion.”
Some of the soccer players also participate in an indoor league at the Soccer Sportsplex in North Olmsted.
According to Wilson, the level of play there varies.
“Mostly we play men’s league teams,” he said. “Some are still in high school. There’s even a referee’s team made up of all the refs in the area.”
Other fall teams have designated the winter as a time for relaxation and recovery, vowing to return to action in the spring.
“Spring is closer to our season,” sophomore volleyball player Darci Leohart said. “So in the winter we take a little break, and then in the spring we’ll try to get into a couple tournaments and start training.”