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Most people know about the all-star athletes that decide to play and train for a different sport every season. However, what about the students that participate in only one sport every year? Students like baseball player Talon Dewey and volleyball player Cheyenne Nicholson only play one sport a year but are still involved in countless amounts of pressure and even consider it as difficult as playing a different sport for every season.

For senior varsity player Talon Dewey, he likes to spend the year training for the one sport he enjoys the most; baseball. In Talon’s case, instead of choosing to play a different sport, he works constantly to condition himself in peak performance leading into the following spring baseball season. While this does give him free time and the flexibility to hone his skills in areas such as batting, throwing or catching, there’s still additional rationale by which he chooses to only participate in baseball.

“I’ve played other sports like basketball, wrestling, football and soccer but I just never had any interest to continue. Baseball was the one sport that always kept my attention, so rather than spending my time on other things I spend my time on the sport I like the most,” Dewey said.

Although Dewey decides to only play baseball, his coaches do however encourage their players to participate in other sports as well.

“My coaches definitely like us to do other sports throughout the year because that way they know we are always training and are always active. However, in some cases like mine they know that I will try my hardest whether I’m in another sport or not, so it really depends,” Dewey said.

On the other hand, for students like varsity volleyball player Cheyenne Nicholson this is not the same case. Rather than playing other sports, volleyball coaches of teams across the state instead encourage their players to stick to volleyball so they can become better at a faster rate.

Even though volleyball begins in the fall, players are given many opportunities to practice with the team as most participate in club volleyball in the winter or beach volleyball in the summer.

“Between club ball and beach volleyball it’s very difficult to fit any other sport in your schedule. Since all the other schools’ varsity athletes play club volleyball, our coaches strongly encourage us to play club volleyball. If you don’t play year round, the likelihood of making varsity is very low since you’ll be behind the rest of your teammates,” Nicholson said.

In addition to the coaches protecting their players from falling behind in their skill level, it can also be said that the varsity coaches are also looking out for their players by making sure they don’t get injured. However, not all the time has this attempt to prevent injury proven to be effective. Even though it may seem that playing one sport would deter players from injury, studies have been shown that athletes who practice the same motion consistently often are more likely to get injured in the muscles that are constantly stressed. Unfortunately, these injuries can be found in students in a wide range of sports including volleyball and baseball.

“Our coaches do want us to train for volleyball all year round, but this doesn’t always prevent us from getting hurt. If you practice serving all the time, after awhile you start to stress out those muscles in your shoulder and soon after everyone starts to get shoulder injuries from a lack of variety,” Nicholson said.