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No Slacking For These Streaks

Summer Workouts Give Sebring Athletes An Edge

Chris Hoffman/Highlands Today

Sebring High's Maxine Copley, left, and Hannah Shoop work out with the medicine ball in the Blue Streak weight room during a recent training session.

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By Christopher  Hoffman | Highlands Today

Published: July 6, 2008

SEBRING — Summer normally means days at the beach, making some extra money at a part-time job or just lounging around with friends.

But for a select group of athletes at Sebring High School, summer spells sweat, hard work and pushing themselves to the limit.

The brainchild of Sebring volleyball head coach Venessa Sinness, girls basketball coach Mike Lee and recently named head softball coach Joe Sinness, the open gym atmosphere has given some Blue Streak athletes a chance to hone their skills and bodies in the months that are normally reserved for slacking.

"We decided to open our gym up so the girls have a chance to keep up with their training, while getting the needed guidance in working out," Venessa Sinness said. "We've designed a whole regimen that they run through three days a week. This is vital in having these girls in shape when school starts."

How beneficial is this to building a winning program?

Sinness said that volleyball is where you'll see the initial production from the program, as its fall schedule begins just days after school reconvenes.

"In the past, the girls would come in and a lot of them would be out of shape," Venessa Sinness said. "In volleyball, you don't have a buffer between school starting and the season. The girls have to be in shape already and ready to play. The open gym gives them that forum to keep their competitive edge."

The joint decision was made between the three varsity coaches to collaborate on the work-out sessions because the three sports share many of the same girls.

"I was thinking about what kind of summer program I wanted to put together," Lee said. "I got with Venessa [Sinness], and it seemed like a natural thing to combine our efforts."

Lee and the other coaches decided from the start to make this summer program more about conditioning than working on any one sport.

"What I think this program does, is it gives the girls healthy habits and a lifestyle that they can take with them," Lee said. "What I think we're doing is getting the girls in better shape than just keeping them in shape. This is going to help all three teams in so many areas, especially with quickness, leaping and explosiveness that is vital to any athlete."

Incoming senior Hannah Shoop is just the kind of three-sport athlete the program is designed for.

She feels that the open gym allows her to keep up with a regular workout routine, which has helped her improve in all three sports.

"It just gives me a chance to keep on a regular schedule, and I can work more intensely on certain areas I may be lacking," Shoop said. "In all three sports, stamina is key, so that's one area we all work on heavily. What I like is that we don't work on any specific sport, but on becoming better-conditioned athletes."

Fearing burnout, Venessa Sinness has limited Shoop to one open volleyball session per week, along with her regular weight-room session.

"Hannah is rare, in that she plays volleyball, basketball and softball," Venessa Sinness said. "The last thing we want to do is for her to suffer burnout. If we didn't monitor her sessions, she'd be at every one and be spent by the time volleyball or basketball started.

"So we've fine-tuned her workout to really focus on her weight training. We feel her time is better spent working on her core strength so she'll be fresh when the season starts."

During conditioning drills, the athletes warm up and stretch before running a variety of distance intervals that are designed to build stamina, while the coaches require each girl to keep a journal to help with their progress.

"We've asked them to write down certain information after each session," Venessa Sinness said. "We want to know how they feel after and what part of the body hurts. After the first week, almost all the girls said that it wasn't as hard as it was in the beginning. That shows us that the conditioning is working."

Track and basketball player Maxine Copely was one of the girls that jumped at the chance to get such specialized attention, along with the camaraderie that working out on her own doesn't provide.

"These workouts really motivate me even more," Copely said. "It really gets boring running by yourself, but these workouts are always changing and keep our attention."

After working on stamina, Joe Sinness has the girls in the weight room working on squats and bench presses for 45 minutes to help tone their muscles.

"Weight training is good in helping to prevent injuries," Joe Sinness said. "The lifting makes a difference in their core strength like their abs and lower body."

Lateral movement is a key element of all three sports, and Venessa Sinness has seen major improvement in her team since working to build their core strength.

"It's like night and day," Venessa said. "You can tell an athlete that's been working with us versus one that is working on their own."

Copely runs through some of the activities she loves, including the endurance running, but her mood changed when speaking of the last 30 minutes.

"That's the point I think we all dread," Copely said. "That's the point when everything is so intense, and that's when we all are giving all we have.

"After it's over, that's when we get the most satisfaction though. Every girl breaks through their own personal wall or threshold, and it's real gratifying to know you didn't give up."

The goal for the coaches this summer is for their girls to attend 60 percent of the sessions to get the full effect of the program.

Senior leadership is also a key element to the success of this program: The coaches have seen most of the upperclassman set an example with their attendance in the hopes that it'll rub off on younger players.

"We want to set an example for the underclassman to follow," Shoop said. "It would be real easy to just sit at home or go out with our friends, but we'd rather make time to make our team better. I want to win district in every sport this year and take the teams as far as they can go.

"To do that, I have to be in the gym and get better every day."

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