When school lets out for the summer, most kids take a break. For high school athletes, however, once classes end, the real work begins. Throughout Cabarrus County, across every sport, athletes use the summer to put in extra work to get better. This year is no exception, as teams everywhere are hitting the gym, field, track or pool to improve.
Area high school basketball teams are among those taking advantage of the summertime. They spent the month of June working out together. The workouts offer a chance to improve, both individually and as a team. It gives coaches a chance to see new players fit in, or how to replace departed ones.
“The summertime is for a lot of evaluations,” Hickory Ridge boys’ coach David Broome said. “We don’t care about the scoreboard, wins and losses, anything like that, we’re looking at player development, finding out guys' strengths and weaknesses, and giving them a chance to show what they can do.”
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For players, the workouts allow a chance to catch a coach’s eye. That can make a difference between being a part of the team’s rotation during the season and watching the games from the bench.
“The workouts help us work better as a team. We have to come as a team and work together and work hard.”
Mount Pleasant and Hickory Ridge battle for a rebound.
Working to improve
Jace Jenkins is a rising junior at Mount Pleasant. He’s moving up from the junior varsity team this year and has his eye on playing a major role in the team’s offense. To do that, he says he has to improve his ball-handling skills. Offseason workouts provide him with a prime opportunity to do that.
“The summer work is helping to make it easier for me to make the move up. It’s a very high expectation, and it’s very different from JV or AAU ball because it’s a huge shift in skill level. I will work hard and figure out some things that can help my game.”
Recently, Jenkins got his chance to go up against other teams with his Tiger teammates. Cox Mill hosted several other Cabarrus County teams, including Central Cabarrus, Concord and Hickory Ridge in a series of scrimmages. Each team got a chance to play two games against other schools. It was a change of pace for the teams, which had spent a lot of time before that playing against their own teammates in practice.
A Spiders player grabs a rebound against South Mecklenburg.
Changing roles
For the schools involved, the goals were different. The Tigers wanted to see what their new guys could do. Cox Mill looked to be giving their rotation players a chance to develop chemistry. Concord had a new guard handling the ball. For Hickory Ridge, Coach Broome said the scrimmages were a way for their JV players to get some floor time against varsity opponents.
“We try to play 25-plus games every summer so that guys making that transition from JV to varsity, or from middle to high school, can say I’ve played a whole season against high school level competition, this is what it looks like in November. It speeds up the process of getting ready to play at the next level.”
Having organized workouts and scrimmages against other teams is a relatively new development in offseason activities. Former NBA All-Star Kemba Walker recently opened a workout facility in downtown Concord. He says the times have definitely changed since he was a high schooler.
“I think it’s an era thing. When I was growing up, we just played four or five games a day in the summer. We just played. But now we’re in the era of kids really training, having those resources, and really taking it seriously,” Walker said.
Spiders Coach Barrett Krueger instructs his team during a break in the action.
'Dead periods'
The workouts will continue for the rest of the summer, though there are now several “dead periods” when the teams cannot have organized activity. Most teams will spend the month of July as Hickory Ridge did, doing mostly conditioning work.
“In July, there are two dead periods, that’s where the kids go and play for their AAU teams, and then they come back with us, and we hit the weight room, doing some conditioning on the track, getting their bodies ready to play in November,” Broome said.
It may be hard to believe, but we are only four weeks away from the official start of fall sports practices. For the athletes involved, it marks the beginning of a new school year and new seasons. But do not mistake the start of the seasons as the beginning of the work. The athletes never stopped working.
