Although many spring sports are coming to an end, for many athletes, much work is still to come.

Between the end of spring season and the beginning of fall sports, many students remain active by continuing their hard work during the summer. This offseason training is vital in order to stay fit and be prepared for the in-school season.

Junior Cassie Terranova does three seasons of sports: crew in the fall, spring and summer, along with hockey in the winter. Terranova plans on spending 10 weeks of the summer at Community Rowing Inc. The summer program takes place six days a week and has practice twice a day for over an hour at a time.

According to Terranova, summer training allows her to maintain a good level of athleticism.

“The offseason is a little bit different in terms of, you don’t want to lose fitness. You still want to stay in the same place you were at.  If you don’t row for like two months, you lose a lot of everything,” Terranova said.

Sophomore Julian Vesneske also plans on doing extensive summer training. He plays volleyball during the school year and expects to work continually on his athletic abilities.

“I’m doing three leg-days a week because I’m focusing mostly on jumping. The rest of that is mostly going to be core and a bit of upper body,” Vesneske said. “Other than that, I’m going to try to go to the pool at least once a week because that also helps with whole body fitness.  Go to the beach for just stability and strength as well, and other than that, I’m going to try to do some running to develop stamina.”

For Vesneske, summer training is essential for a good fall season, providing much of the progress he makes in a sport.

“You do training during the offseason just to do better during the season, but also I feel better when I’m exercising. I feel more generally fit which is like just mentally stronger,” Vesneske said.  “Most of it is like, you are not going to make any progress during the season,you make most of your progress during the off-season,the on-season is just for showing the progress you’ve made.”

Although Vesneske recognizes that not everyone will put in work, he said doing the extra work during the offseason is a key to advancing further than others might during the normal season.

“I have a lot of friends who’ve been surprised when I say I’m doing six days a week but once you start doing it it’s kinda hard to stop. So if you want to be a good athlete you should definitely put in the work.  If you just want to play the sport go ahead and play the sport, but you might not make it as far as everyone else,” Vesneske said.

Junior Julianna Watson also sees value in summer training. Watson will be the cross country captain next year and a three-season athlete. After taking a week to recover following the end of the outdoor track season, she plans on beginning her offseason training.

As captain, she also organizes practices for other athletes to participate in over the summer.

“I’m going to run six days a week and I’m also going to do strength training. So our coach always gives us an outline of what to do over the summer for cross country and I’m going to be one of the captains next year and the cross country captains organize practices a couple of times a week for the summer,” Watson said.

Watson said there is value in putting work in over the summer to stay active and to avoid going into the fall season unprepared. According to Watson, building up fitness takes time, and beginning in fall with no work will be bad for making progress.

Although summer training takes up time during break, for Watson, it is not something she minds doing.

“I recommend it because it really helps and if you enjoy doing the sport, it won’t feel like a chore you have to do over the summer it will be something you like to do,” Watson said. “Me and some other people on the cross country team really enjoy running and it’s really a social sport so we kinda run together, and it’s a fun thing.”