There’s no more sleeping in, no more steady diet of fast food and soft serve ice cream, and no semblance of a social life for student-athletes between the first day of fall sports practice and the beginning of class.
Still, if you think Monday morning or afternoon was the cruelest part of a high school football, soccer or field hockey player’s season or golfer or cross country runner’s campaign, and that it’s all downhill from here, think again.
Today is the real kick in the pants.
“Tuesday morning will be tough,” Oak Hill High School football coach Bruce Nicholas said after the evening installment of his team’s split schedule. “You have a lot of kids right now who are tired and sore. The alarm’s going to go off in the morning, and they’re going to try to roll out of bed and say, Oh, my God.'”
With the first days of practice permitted by Maine Principals’ Association comes a variety of challenges.
Most area teams have less than three weeks to get their act together before regular-season games commence on Friday, Sept. 2, or Saturday, Sept. 3. Exhibition games typically start this weekend, so every minute of dress rehearsal is precious as teams dot the Is, cross the Ts and memorize the Xs and Os.
In football, that means the tried-and-true, traditional two-a-day.
Oak Hill players report to camp at 7:30 a.m. for an 8 o’clock session in an effort to stay a step ahead of the sun, then once more around dinner time.
On Monday, keeping pace with those demands wasn’t as stressful as it sounds, unless you were a coach.
“I’ve been around long enough to know you don’t get a lot of serious stuff done the first day,” Nicholas said.
Sixty-one students reported to Nicholas on Monday morning, a delegation up nearly 50 percent from last year. Nearly half were freshmen, creating a need for on-the-job training in everything from lacing up shoulder pads to opening a locker.
There’s the daunting task of documenting every physical examination form and permission slip, and the occasional sinking feeling of realizing you still aren’t prepared.
“We had so many kids that we wound up having eight without helmets,” Nicholas said. “I had to make a run to Northeast Athletics.”
The news wasn’t all bad for bleary-eyed kids and frazzled grown-ups. Even after the morning mist and cloud cover evaporated, midday temperatures barely grazed 80, a welcome change from last week’s oppressive humidity.
Coaches employ different tactics to beat the heat, overcome everyone’s dog-day desire to take a nap and prepare for the September schedule that’s only a heartbeat away.
Leavitt Area High School football players spent six hours on the Turner school grounds Monday, convening from 8 to 11 a.m. and again from 4 to 7 p.m.
For one-third of each session, however, coach Mike Hathaway kept the Hornets sequestered away from the practice grid.
“We (spent) the first hour of each session either studying plays in the classroom or lifting weights,” he said.
St. Dominic Regional High School’s field hockey team completed its summer schedule at the end of July, just before the MPA’s two-week prohibition on coach-player contact prior to the fall season.
Knowing his players have been schooled in the fundamentals, St. Dom’s coach Brian Kay only calls his team to practice at 2:30 p.m. for one two-hour session every day this week.
It helps the Saints get accustomed to their school-year schedule, one that starts Thursday, almost two full weeks ahead of everyone else.
“We do a lot of running,” said Kay. “You can tell immediately who’s been staying in shape on their own and who hasn’t. You also have a good chance to tell if someone’s a player.”
Nicholas heard some of the same hyperventilating.
“I don’t want to kill ’em the first week. The MPA has a rule that you can only wear helmets and shoulder pads the first two days,” Nicholas said. “We won’t even have contact drills until Wednesday.”
That allows four full practices (after the equipment shortage gets solved, that is) to work on basics such as the three-point stance, how to give and take a handoff and the exchange between center and quarterback.
Don’t laugh. Even at Oak Hill, a program that’s been a constant presence in the playoffs this decade, Nicholas knows better than to take anything for granted.
“You think of the snap from center as automatic,” said Nicholas, “but our second group fumbled the first one they tried. That’s why we do it and get it over with now. We worked in a couple of plays tonight. They weren’t pretty, but they ran.”
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