By: Landon Paasch
Photo: Madison McKnight
Many sports have been concluded for the year, and now it’s time to start training for the beginning of summer sports. Sports starting practices for the summer are boy’s golf, cross country, and football.
Plenty of schools will be very challenging to stack up against in this year's fall sports season. Since the MAC is a very competitive conference, training as much as possible for our athletes is critical. With the Sabers competing against schools such as PV, Bettendorf, and the Davenport area schools, summer training serves as an equalizing opportunity for our school to stay competitive. It is also very essential for students to be able to work out. Contributing to this would increase their athletic performance in each of these sports.
Although some sports already require you to lift, it is still important to do this daily to maintain a healthy, strong body while playing, if you're in-season, or out-of-season lifting during the summer. Central DeWitt offers students the opportunity to workout in very put-together facilities that are very high quality for such a small town.
Our competitive play may also contribute to our headline players that we will be losing this year because of graduation purposes. Golfers who will no longer be on the team include Grant Gregoire, William Ginter, Kyle Bixby, Colton Sullivan, and Nathan McGarry. Elston Linder, Brady Freeman, and Ben Zimmer are some notable cross-country runners who won't return. Lastly, the football players who won’t be back include star players such as Gus Pickup, Tristan Rheingans, and Mitch Maher.
Losing seniors is simply unavoidable, and it hurts when they are key assets to the team. The Sabers have relatively young teams compared to other MAC teams, so despite not always having the best skilled or most athletic players, the upcoming years for Central DeWitt should come with prosperity.
Despite the fact that we’re losing seniors in this year’s summer sports, doesn’t mean that people haven’t tried to improve on certain skills needed to assist the team's potential. A freshman golfer (soon to be a sophomore), Kane Waechter, quoted how he wanted to improve, stating, “Last year I couldn't really hit the ball far, so during the winter I worked on drills that could help with that.” This indicates how he decides to improve to help the Sabers conquer the opposing teams.
Waecher also stated, “I think the 2024 season will go well, I'm excited to see what happens.”
The only thing in question is whether or not all athletes want to win. This is all based on each of the individual's performances and how superior they are during this year. So, although we did lose seniors, our team will be astonishing because we still have prominent athletes, and most likely have new freshmen players. Every one of these individual athletes will help the Sabers make it all the way to the top.
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