Summer Is 'Championship Time' For High Schools
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Mark [email protected]
To be honest, it turns out a lot of teams are done for the day by 6 a.m.
Time is being invested in weight rooms, building muscles in specific ways for specific sports. Endurance is being built up with a wide variety of drills, many of which are quite traditional and others are the latest and greatest ways to build speed, quickness and/or endurance.
Believe it or not, a lot of time is being invested in studying ... not in the “hit the books” sense, but learning playbooks, and simulating mentally certain situations.
Along with a time investment is the building of sweat equity. In some sports there are games to be played (within IHSAA guidelines, of course).
Summer camps are in full swing for the players and the cheerleaders as well. Student-athletes and their families are making a commitment to improve in specific sports, sometimes with an eye toward extending athletic careers past high school.
Incidentally, if you believe cheerleading doesn’t require athletic ability, odds are you’re either not paying attention or stuck in 1950s thinking. Try it for a week.
None of these things happen without at least some financial commitment. Many times vacations are postponed, scheduled around or even non-existent in order to meet goals.
All of these things are done with the idea of becoming champions. For most teams, a sectional championship is a stated goal before the season starts. For the rest, it’s on the list of long-term goals as a program progresses.
Yet none of these summer activities will guarantee a new entry listed on a banner hanging in the gym. In the past year, three Times-Union area schools (Tippecanoe Valley, Wawasee and Whitko) played in the same sectional, and there were cases when none of the three came away with the title.
The only real guarantee, near as I can tell, comes from not doing the offseason work; the lack of investments in time, effort and finances means any kind of title is a long-shot at best, and if it is overcome it’s when raw talent meets sheer luck.
So I wish the student-athletes of summer the best of luck, and we’ll see you in the fall!
Other things I wonder about: how in the world can there be another Kansas City Royal voted to the All-Star team? I bled Royal Blue for years, and still cannot justify Omar Infante being on, much less starting, on the American League team this year.
Infante is likely to be hitting less than .200 soon, though it can be hard to tell whether he’s in an actual slump right now or his playing days are numbered because he can’t hit at all anymore.
Defensively, Infante remains solid, to the point where there is justification for the Royals leaving him in the lineup for the time being. That and there isn’t anyone in the organization (since they traded Johnny Giavotella to the Angels) that has a shot at being a better alternative at this point.
The good news is there’s no chance Mike Trout will be booted from the last outfield position. KC’s Alex Rios has about half the number of votes of Trout, so the outfield is set.
We reviewed the rest of the positions last week, so I’ll not go back there. And yes, I think there will be a rule change as a result of this year’s voting.
I’d care a lot less if the All-Star Game was merely an exhibition. But since former baseball grand poobah Bud Selig decided to give the winning league home-field advantage in the World Series, it does matter and justifies the need to have the league’s best players in the game.
The Royals have as many worthy players as it ever has for the Midsummer Classic, but I can’t justify more than four of them being starters. I have yet to cast my ballot (and won’t vote 35 times...sheesh!) but I’ve never been strictly a homer in the past and I won’t start now.
I am now on the LeBron James bandwagon. If some how, some way Cleveland can figure out how to win the NBA title, it’s hard for a less-than-casual fan like myself to see what else King James could do to secure his legacy.
To be fair to the rest of the Cavaliers, they are among the best 300 or so basketball players in the world. It’s not like the starting lineups are announced with “Pete Snarznowsky, come on down! You’re the starting point guard for the Cavs tonight!”
At the same time, most of the remaining six the Cavaliers are playing couldn’t start for very many teams in the NBA.
I’d suggest if Cleveland pulled it out, this would be as great as any one of Jordan’s six championships.
But not greater than all of them. And that’s where the legacy discussion would begin.[[In-content Ad]]
To be honest, it turns out a lot of teams are done for the day by 6 a.m.
Time is being invested in weight rooms, building muscles in specific ways for specific sports. Endurance is being built up with a wide variety of drills, many of which are quite traditional and others are the latest and greatest ways to build speed, quickness and/or endurance.
Believe it or not, a lot of time is being invested in studying ... not in the “hit the books” sense, but learning playbooks, and simulating mentally certain situations.
Along with a time investment is the building of sweat equity. In some sports there are games to be played (within IHSAA guidelines, of course).
Summer camps are in full swing for the players and the cheerleaders as well. Student-athletes and their families are making a commitment to improve in specific sports, sometimes with an eye toward extending athletic careers past high school.
Incidentally, if you believe cheerleading doesn’t require athletic ability, odds are you’re either not paying attention or stuck in 1950s thinking. Try it for a week.
None of these things happen without at least some financial commitment. Many times vacations are postponed, scheduled around or even non-existent in order to meet goals.
All of these things are done with the idea of becoming champions. For most teams, a sectional championship is a stated goal before the season starts. For the rest, it’s on the list of long-term goals as a program progresses.
Yet none of these summer activities will guarantee a new entry listed on a banner hanging in the gym. In the past year, three Times-Union area schools (Tippecanoe Valley, Wawasee and Whitko) played in the same sectional, and there were cases when none of the three came away with the title.
The only real guarantee, near as I can tell, comes from not doing the offseason work; the lack of investments in time, effort and finances means any kind of title is a long-shot at best, and if it is overcome it’s when raw talent meets sheer luck.
So I wish the student-athletes of summer the best of luck, and we’ll see you in the fall!
Other things I wonder about: how in the world can there be another Kansas City Royal voted to the All-Star team? I bled Royal Blue for years, and still cannot justify Omar Infante being on, much less starting, on the American League team this year.
Infante is likely to be hitting less than .200 soon, though it can be hard to tell whether he’s in an actual slump right now or his playing days are numbered because he can’t hit at all anymore.
Defensively, Infante remains solid, to the point where there is justification for the Royals leaving him in the lineup for the time being. That and there isn’t anyone in the organization (since they traded Johnny Giavotella to the Angels) that has a shot at being a better alternative at this point.
The good news is there’s no chance Mike Trout will be booted from the last outfield position. KC’s Alex Rios has about half the number of votes of Trout, so the outfield is set.
We reviewed the rest of the positions last week, so I’ll not go back there. And yes, I think there will be a rule change as a result of this year’s voting.
I’d care a lot less if the All-Star Game was merely an exhibition. But since former baseball grand poobah Bud Selig decided to give the winning league home-field advantage in the World Series, it does matter and justifies the need to have the league’s best players in the game.
The Royals have as many worthy players as it ever has for the Midsummer Classic, but I can’t justify more than four of them being starters. I have yet to cast my ballot (and won’t vote 35 times...sheesh!) but I’ve never been strictly a homer in the past and I won’t start now.
I am now on the LeBron James bandwagon. If some how, some way Cleveland can figure out how to win the NBA title, it’s hard for a less-than-casual fan like myself to see what else King James could do to secure his legacy.
To be fair to the rest of the Cavaliers, they are among the best 300 or so basketball players in the world. It’s not like the starting lineups are announced with “Pete Snarznowsky, come on down! You’re the starting point guard for the Cavs tonight!”
At the same time, most of the remaining six the Cavaliers are playing couldn’t start for very many teams in the NBA.
I’d suggest if Cleveland pulled it out, this would be as great as any one of Jordan’s six championships.
But not greater than all of them. And that’s where the legacy discussion would begin.[[In-content Ad]]
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