By Peter Warner ’19

THE ROUNDUP

Morning and afternoon practice times disrupt different athletes’ individually depending on their preferred sleeping schedule and their other extracurricular activities.

Kaidan Linse ’20 was on the JVB soccer team his freshman year and has been playing club soccer his whole life. He believes afternoon practices are better for him.

“(They) don’t mess with me and my schedule,” said Linse. “It allows me to go home and not have to worry about getting up really early in the morning. I can get it done right after school, go right to the field, then I’ve got the rest of the night to do stuff.”

Mr. Quentin Orem says that he prefers practice to be in the morning over the afternoon. Mr. Orem coaches the JVB soccer team, who practice in both mornings and afternoons.

“It’s just nice to be done at the end of the school day,” said Mr. Orem. “There is something rejuvenating about starting the day with practice.”

Mr. Orem is surprised that many of his players prefer morning practices. “I routinely find that players prefer morning practice to afternoon practice,” said Orem. “It blows my mind, I don’t think it is universal but I believe the majority players say that they prefer the afternoon practices.”

Proving Orem’s point, eight out of ten athletes preferred afternoon practice when asked. Sleep played a role in half of the players decisions.

Linse said that morning practices affect his sleep more.

“I’d say the morning practices are worse because I had to go bed later because I had to do homework,” said Linse. “I didn’t have that time in the morning to do homework like I usually do.”

They both believe that sleep affects the performance of the players.

Mr. Orem says that players are more mentally focused in the morning than the afternoon. The afternoon practices are the opposite, where the players are more energetic but are less focused.

“I think that they are more focused but more sluggish physically in the morning,” said Orem. “I think physically they perform better in the afternoon but mentally their energy often all over the place because they have a whole day of things bouncing around in their head.”

“You always want a good night’s sleep before a practice or game and having practice in the morning kind of hurt that,” said Linse.