Swish! The ball flies through the air into the nets between lacrosse players during their green day practice. While lacrosse practices skills on green day, different spring sports prepare for their seasons differently.
Green days are pre-season practices for athletes to get in shape before tryouts. With each sport requiring different skill sets, athletes focus on different techniques and exercise for each. For junior track runner Byon Chumnoeur, his track practices set the basics of the sport for more precise drills.
“We mostly focus on short endurance work, like aerobic capacity,” Chumnoeur said. “It just sets the groundwork of the fitness needed.”
However, Chumnoeur doesn’t think that the green day workouts are that impactful compared to the regular practices, with the difference being that there aren’t that many green days before the tryouts. Because the track team does similar workouts during the season, Chumnoeur uses the green days to create new workouts for himself instead.
“I create a lot of workouts since I know so much about the sport, like official workouts influenced from the basics during practice that’ll help me grow as a runner.” Chumnoeur said.
Like track, baseball players, such as junior Ayan Alva, have already been playing during the winter with their club teams. Even during the summer, most players also play with their club teams.
“I think it’s a fun and useful time for the team to start practicing together again,” Alva said. “It’s also nice to see all your friends who you haven’t played with in, like, a year.”
The baseball team does their workouts either outside on the baseball field, or if the temperature is colder, they have their green days in the weight room or the gym lobby. When the weight room is available to just them, they take out their batting cages and practice their batting.
“Because of the snow stopping us from going outside, we’ve been focusing on weightlifting,” Alva said. “But usually we would work on core work, strength, and speed to ramp up to be in peak physical condition.”
Junior lacrosse player Clare Muskett also uses the weight room with her lacrosse team as well as the field over in Greenbriar. During their green days, players focus on all the aspects of lacrosse.
“We try to work on every single part to balance out,” Muskett said. “We focus on stick work, a little bit of conditioning, teamwork, clears and scrimmages.”
Some winter sports are still in their last couple of weeks right when spring sports starts. Since Muskett also swims, she uses the green days as a way to keep her skills honed while juggling both sports.
“It helps me personally to practice lacrosse since I can’t often do it on my own,” Muskett said. “To get ready for tryouts I usually run a lap, stretch, then get right into the exercises.”
