Fall sports have officially ended, which means, for some seniors, a conclusion to their sports career as a whole. However, the off-season preparation does not stop when the season does.
Fall and spring sports athletes go through many methods of training to prepare for their sport. Fall sports such as football recently ended and players like Nathaniel Stewart and Demarco Blount have already started off-season workouts after only just coming off their season as junior varsity and varsity football players. “Just because the season ends doesn’t mean that we take a break or sit down a while,” Stewart said.
“Nate and I have played football since we could walk, and we have trained together for many years and after the season we work while others ‘relax,’ ” Blount said. “We are trying to have what it takes to play at the next level.” To do this, they are currently training at “pinnacle performance, strength and conditioning.” Football weight training does not begin for a few more weeks but some players, like Blount and Stewart, are starting early and getting a head start to a successful season in the fall of 2014.
As for spring sports, many athletes’ off-season workouts are in full swing. Their work not only involves physical training but also constructing a better sports complex to prepare them for better practice.
La Plata baseball is doing many off-season activities off-campus, with some players taking part in hitting lessons, practicing catching/throwing, and attending camps at universities. Jack Pilkerton, a baseball player for two years now, said, “We have constructed a new hitting station on the field, and we work out after school on the track.”
Lacrosse is another spring sport that is taken seriously at La Plata, still fairly new in Charles County but rapidly becoming one of the top sports the county has to offer. Lacrosse athletes are practicing year-round in indoor lacrosse and with activities as simple as shooting in a backyard goal with a few friends. “We have been conditioning and practicing on empty lacrosse nets, and overall just staying in shape,” Keith Viering said, a varsity lacrosse player.
With the work these students are putting into their sports, La Plata is primed to become a school to be taken seriously all throughout the Southern Maryland Athletic Conference.
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