By P. Erik Meyer ’14
THE ROUNDUP

Student athletes have always had busy schedules, but how does that schedule change when you have to factor in traveling long distances to compete for your school?

Some athletes say that often times an away game can eat up another hour, two hours or even an entire weekend because of travel.

“Most of our meets are in California, one of our upcoming regattas is in San Diego and we’ve got another one in Long Beach,” said Max Hall ’14. “We bus to those and we fly to our regional championship in Sacramento.”

Hall is on the varsity crew team and his daily schedule consists of working out after school until about 6:30 p.m. and working out before school Wednesday and Friday at 5:30 a.m., not to mention  regular weekend workouts.

“It’s a lot of late nights, it’s takes a lot of time management,” Hall said. “We’re pretty much at crew all time so you just have to find time to do homework. All the guys pretty much find a way to get it done.”

Ryan Grotjohn ’13 participates in two varsity sports, baseball and soccer, and has also played on club teams outside of Brophy since he was nine years old.

“I’ve played both sports since I was three, and club when I was nine,” Grotjohn said. “I remember when I was 10 I had to drive to a baseball game to a soccer game back to a baseball game and back to a soccer game all in one day. So I had to do that during middle school.”

Grotjohn often has practices at school starting during seventh period for baseball and after school for soccer. Practice often lasts until at least 5 p.m.

“I usually don’t do homework until like 10 at night because after sports it’s hard,” Grotjohn said. “You’re tired and you just want to relax and go to sleep. I do some of it at night, but most of it I have to do at school.”

Grotjohn said that baseball tends to take farther trips than soccer; last year he went to Yuma for a baseball game against Kofa, but the farthest soccer game in the state was against Salpointe in Tucson this year.

“It helps that they are not during the same season for high school,” Grotjohn said of being involved in both baseball and soccer. “It’s just fitting in when to do homework and having a good time schedule so you know how much you have to do and how much time you have.”

It’s not just the farthest games that make the most impact though.

“I live far away from Brophy anyways, in Cave Creek, so usually our games are in Mesa and Chandler so that’s another hour,” Grotjohn said. “I’ll get home around 10:30 p.m. or 11 p.m. and then finally eat dinner.”

No matter the distance, student athletes say they have to get the work done.

“You’ve got to work hard at each and every practice, try as hard as you can to get your homework done well, not just done, but well,” Hall said.