Three sports seasons occur at Placer High School, all in which a lot of kids find at least one sport they enjoy to participate in. A few students at Placer High are taking their love for sports to the next level by playing two sports at one time.
Freshman Macaylea Mitchell already participated in two sports this year, cross country during the fall, and basketball during the winter. Now during the spring she is participating in both varsity soccer, and varsity track. Mitchell is one of a few four sport athletes.
Mitchell follows a hard schedule every week that consists of going to track on Mondays, and soccer the rest of the week. Mitchell also competes in the weekly track meets, and she goes to early morning track practices. Mitchell says she doesn’t have a problem with track meets and soccer games on the same day, but she has had a soccer tournament the weekend of a track meet where she competed in the track meet, and then went to the soccer tournament the next day.
Both of Mitchell’s coaches are very understanding and compromising of the situation, and doing both sports will not affect her playing time in any way. With all these sports going on Mitchell still manages to get straight A’s in school. Mitchell loves both teams and enjoys both sports.
“I enjoy doing both sports, and both teams are great”, stated Mitchell.
Sophomore Gama Gomez is currently a three sport athlete, but next year that will change when he does both cross country and soccer at the same time. Gomez will compete in cross country and soccer during the fall, wrestling during the winter, and track during the spring.
Gomez stated he loves soccer and running, and since he is good at both he figured he would try both sports at once. Gomez is mainly trying cross country to keep him in great shape for soccer. Gomez says he can do both because meet and game schedules should not conflict due to most soccer games being on week days, and most meets being on weekends.
Gomez plans to practice soccer three days a week, and cross country two days a week, but the schedule depends on what the coaches agree on. Gomez does not think doing both sports will affect his playing time.
Last year during the fall senior Darren Centi finished his soccer season and the day after joined the cross country team. Centi joined the cross country team to help the team advance to state, and win the section championship. Centi added it was a tough transition to cross country, even though soccer kept him in good shape.
“Making a transition to another sport in such a short period of time is difficult”, stated Centi.
Centi added it would have been nice to have a bigger break before basketball, but doing cross country was definitely worth the hard work, and he loved the team.
“Getting to hang out with a new team is a lot of fun,” stated Centi.