Spring sport athletes here at Groves High School are always on top of their game, and not just in the pool, on the field or on the court. Starting in January, a majority of the spring teams begin preseason training in the weight room. And being that it is the majority, this causes some overlap. 

For at least as long as I have been at Groves, the football team, hockey team, poms team and softball team have had shared use of the weight room with at least two of the four in there at once, if not more. However, this year it seems the room has reached its capacity, with three teams in there at almost all times. While the weight room may seem large at first glance, having that many athletes using it at once hinders the teams abilities to conduct their training to its full potential. Most teams need more than one section of the weight room, so once there are more than two it becomes overwhelming and overcrowded.

Sydney Lezovich, a senior on the softball team here at Groves, says that “it definitely gets really crowded, and there have been a lot of times where we couldn’t do our workout the way we wanted to because there was no room in certain areas of the weight room. It used to be fine with one other team, but now it’s getting to be too overwhelming”. As a senior, Lezovich has years of experience doing preseason workouts in the weight room, and has never had issues before this year. Lezovich stated that her team has never enjoyed time in the weight room to themselves. “We really only have, like, thirty minutes of our almost two hours in there completely alone,” Lezovich claims. For teams that are larger, this is a major negative impact on the quality of work the teams can do to better their upcoming season.

Another softball-playing senior, Alexis Heller, had similar thoughts on the matter.“I definitely notice a difference between this year and last year. I’ve noticed there are a lot more teams this year like baseball that kind of make it harder to do our workout,” Heller said. In the past, the most common teams in the weight room were softball and pom-pons. This year, teams like baseball and football were added into the mix and have created chaos within a setting that used to be much calmer. When asking Heller if she saw a solution to this problem, she said, “I think we could communicate with the other teams, or if everyone needs the room on the same day then make sure the times are fully spread apart so there is no more overlap”. After speaking with athletes impacted by the changes with teams in the weight room, it seems like communication is a major influence that could be easily resolved in the coming years.

For many athletes, it is common to practice in the presence of other teams, but sometimes that can become too overwhelming. Here at Groves High School, this wasn’t an issue until this year when multiple teams began using the weight room at once; however, this could be easily resolved with communication improvements and limiting the number of teams allowed in the room at once. For our school to maintain its reputation of having excelling sports teams, all of our athletes need the most efficient training as possible and that begins with preseason running efficiently.