By Jack Davis ’19
THE ROUNDUP

The school schedule has provided a seventh period athletics class in order to help student athletes hone their craft and create a manageable workload.

One seventh period athlete is Matthew Kempton ’17, a varsity basketball forward and varsity football player who said that his end-of-the-day class has helped him develop on the court and in the classroom.

“Instead of getting home around 6 or 7, I’m getting home at around 5, giving me more time to get homework done or get extra work in,” he said. “Now, I have more time to get a lot of rest.”

Kempton said that seventh period gives students a chance to have good time management, allowing them to be a better student and athlete.

The class gives student athletes the chance to complete their scholarly requirements but also have time available to spend training.

“Student athletes are all busy,” said baseball head coach Mr. Tom Succow. “It allows us in that 50 minute time, which is during the school schedule, to get some work done, and kids still can be kids.”

Mr. Succow said that the period helps students gain muscle and become better athletes overall.

“It helps us tremendously in terms of training, which to me, is different than practice,” Mr. Succow said. “We’re able to do conditioning, agility work and speed enhancement along with Coach [Joe] Denk … It gives us a step-forward in terms of working on skills.”

Mr. Succow pointed to Mason Kokodynski ’19 as an example of why seventh period is beneficial to dual-sport athletes.

“We have a sophomore, Mason Kokodynski, who has been in our seventh period baseball all year long so far,” Mr. Succow said. “He definitely is a candidate as a sophomore to make varsity. Mason is still able to go to shootarounds in basketball … He’s allowed to do both.”

“He’s going to be a really good baseball player in the future, and it’s allowed him to really mature as a baseball player yet still work on his skills after the class with basketball,” he added.

College recruiters are very interested in kids who play more than one sport, making the opportunity to take a seventh period athletics class very enticing.

Urban Meyer, the head football coach at Ohio State University, has posted on Twitter that there’s a very small percentage of kids that they recruit and sign to play football at Ohio State that are only football players.

“Most of the kids they sign are kids coming out of high school that have played more than one sport,” Mr. Succow said. “I think it’s really important that they experience some other opportunities in other sports.”

Kempton said that he finds seventh period athletics to be a good end to the day.

“It always gets my mind off of school or the day and whatever has happened,” Kempton said. “It’s my favorite way to end the school day.”