First Day of Fall Season Practices Filled with Excitement and Conditioning

Today is the first official day of fall season practices for many teams around Maryland, which signals the beginning of a new year for high school athletics. CSZ has gone to a couple different schools to gauge what the atmosphere has been like on the first day. One word that has gotten repeated constantly is excitement.

"There's a lot of excitement and anticipation for the new school year and new beginnings," Kenwood High School athletic director Tony Ruocco said. "I always feel like this first day of practice is the most important day of the year because you're getting the kids to build into the team's camaraderie."

A way teams were building team camaraderie on the first day was through conditioning work. The Kenwood football team was doing different agility workouts while the Eastern Tech boys soccer team did sprints and then went for a long distance run as a team.

Over at Patapsco, the girls soccer team was being put through their paces by their coaches, running suicides and doing barrel races. Even though a lot of the girls played together over the summer on a club team, coach Steve Dorfman still wants to see what kind of condition each player is in.

"Some of the girls run over the summer, but with some of them we have to run them back into shape during the first day or two," said Dorfman. "Over the first couple of days we do a lot more running than handling with soccer balls, but as the season goes along that will change."

Eastern Tech's boys soccer coach Pete Glaudemans has also made fitness evaluation a priority for the first few days. The Mavericks have a three day tryout period so that every kid can demonstrate what they are capable of, after which the team is broken off into varsity and JV, so it is also important to see where an athlete's talent level is at.

"It is really simple- what I need from my athletes right now is for them to do their best," said Glaudemans. "I want them to show that they have a passion for the game and are willing to work hard to always want to do their best in every single moment."

County Sports Zone could not be more excited about the high school sports year getting started!