There’s something about freezing mornings and dark evenings that makes many students want to curl up in bed.
For most dedicated Club Sports teams, it’s business as usual even as the daylight hours dwindle and team attendance drops.
“Last year, people stopped showing up in the winter,” Laura Thorkildson, the coordinator of the women’s Club soccer team, said. “We’re hoping to keep the attendance up this year.”
Head coordinator of the women’s Club crew team, Laura Breedlove, agreed with Thorkildson.
“Winter attendance can be shaky, and it’s the part of the season that’s the hardest to keep up with training,” she said.
The adverse effects of the season can deter even the most driven athletes. Most Club teams are forced to plan their training programs around the season.
The women’s soccer team cuts practices from three times per week to once per week, shedding its cleats for court shoes to get its kicks in. They play in weekly indoor matches Friday nights at the Kick City Indoor Soccer Arena in Springfield against other Club teams.
Indoor soccer is a six-on-six game with smaller goals.
“The indoor season is a fun thing,” Thorkildson said. “It’s more relaxed and more casual.”
Known around the Club Sports circle as hard-core all-weather athletes, things are different for the crew team, which uses winter as a mid-season break. In the cold, it’s impractical for them to train on the water, so they revert to dry land.
“We use the winter period to build a strong aerobic base and make sure our speed and strength levels go up,” Breedlove said.
Winter is a reprieve from the
grueling six-day-per-week training schedule of the fall and spring. The team trains five days per week indoors in its “Erg House” on rowing machines called ergometers.
“Typically, in the winter, we work on the ergs a lot,” Breedlove said. “And we also run the stairs at Hayward Field or lift weights. It depends on what training plan our coaches draw up.”
This hard work helps them build up for spring, when they head to San Diego for two-per-day practices throughout spring break.
In comparison, the surfing Club spends its winter differently.
“We have a really relaxed club atmosphere,” said head coordinator Stevie Spencer, a Portland native whose family hails from Southern California.
In the fall and spring, the 30-member surfing Club takes weekly trips to the coast to ride the waves.
“Unlike what most people think, it’s not the cold that’s an issue because the ocean temperature is a steady 45-50 degrees Fahrenheit all year round,” Spencer said. “The thing that matters is the surf. In the winter, the swells get closer together, making it harder to paddle out because you have a constant barrage of waves hitting you.”
On the days when the water conditions aren’t manageable, the surfers find other activities to do together.
“We all just hang out in the winter,” Spencer said. “We meet once a week to watch surfing videos, and everyone’s pretty close.”
Spencer said snowboarding is a good winter substitute for the waves.
“Snowboarding is very much like surfing because the turns and stance are pretty similar,” Spencer said. “We haven’t taken any team trips, but since we can’t surf as often in the winter, many of us like to go snowboarding instead.”