As the clock ran out at the varsity girls basketball State Quarterfinal game on Friday, March 9, Jessica Aldenderfer, senior, saw her last season of MHS basketball come to a close; however, her athletic career at MHS is far from over.
Aldenderfer will now join the track team after missing tryouts and the first week of practices to play in the basketball district tournament. Her events include hurdles and the triple jump.
“The track coaches are really understanding about it,” Aldenderfer said. “They know that I’m doing basketball, and they want me to get as far as we can with that.”
She said the conflicting schedules haven’t caused too much conflict because track doesn’t have definite tryouts and the coaches are familiar with Aldenderfer’s abilities from her previous years on track.
There are benefits from the back-to-back schedules, Aldenderfer said, as she is already in shape, but having to join practices later can harm her performance at the beginning of the season.
“It’s a little bit hard jumping into track after everyone’s been doing it for a week or more,” Aldenderfer said. “But once I get further into the season, it’s not that big of a deal because I stay in pretty good shape at basketball.”
Marissa Waeckerle, assistant track coach, said basketball players often have this conflict, but it isn’t worrying because the beginning of track season is focused on conditioning.
“Although those athletes join us whenever their season is over, they come in in great shape because they’ve already been competing for so long in the winter season,” Waeckerle said.
The coaches often encourage these athletes to take a few days off after their winter sport ends, to allow their body to rest, Waekerle said. The time off also can give the students time to catch up on missing assignments, study for tests and reset.
“The winter season is so long. They’ve been going for like four months of practice, and in order to keep their bodies healthy sometimes you just have to rest and recharge mentally,” Waekerle said.
Joshua Li, senior, said he would appreciate a chance to rest after a long hockey season that concluded at the State Championship.
Li had tennis tryouts the week leading up to the Champion Cup championship game on Friday, March ,1 against DeSmet Jesuit High School. Practice for hockey took precedence over tennis, so Li had to miss multiple days of tryouts.
“I’m not necessarily upset, but I guess I wished it started next week or a week after that, probably would be better,” Li said.
Li said Alex Nelle, head tennis coach, was understanding about his priority for hockey.
One issue Li faces in comparison to other athletes, however, is his number of missed tryouts practices, Nelle said.
For MSHSAA-sponsored sports like basketball, practices from the winter sport carry over to the spring season. Since hockey is sponsored by the Mid States Hockey Association, Li needs to make up his missed practice dates to meet the requirement of 14 practices to participate in matches.
Nelle said he would rather create make-up practice dates than have Li miss hockey practice.
“We rather our winter sports be successful and we adjust when we start our season, than them not be successful,” Nelle said. “Because if kids are missing spring sports because of winter sports, it means the winter sports are doing really well, which is what we want.”
The main thing Li missed out on was challenge matches that allow the coaches to rank players, but because Nelle has had Li on the team for multiple years, he has a good idea of Li’s ability, Nelle said. The missed time won’t impact Li’s placement much, if at all.
