As the fall sports season comes to an end, tryouts for the winter season are right around the corner; some have already even started. There are six official sports in the upcoming season: wrestling, cheerleading, boys swim and dive, hockey and boys and girls basketball. Just as each of the sports differ from the others, their tryout processes do as well.
Hockey is a sport offered for boys in the winter season. Tryouts took place three weeks ago and lasted for the entire week. After two months of after school conditioning every day, junior Steven Roberts guessed that about 26 boys tried out for the team, six of which were cut.
“We did scrimmaging and skating and shooting and drills and stuff,” Roberts said.
Now that the results are out for the varsity hockey team, the season can begin. Their first game is on Friday, Nov. 23.
Cheerleading is one of the two sports for girls offered in the winter. Tryouts started last Monday and on Tuesday there was an unofficial practice. They then continued until Thursday and the final meeting for results was last Friday night. Senior Jennifer Burns will finish her high school career of cheer this season.
“We break up into groups and do stunting with a bunch of different people so we figure out what level people are at,” Burns said. “We also learn [the routine for] round two and we have our tumbling coach come in on Wednesday and we have tumbling practice with him. We work on jumps and we work on tumbling drills and that kind of stuff.”
The other sport for girls this season is girls basketball. This will be junior Erin O’Neil’s third year playing for DHS.
“Freshmen and JV are usually in the same gym for tryouts,” O’Neil said. “They move players back and forth, but for varsity it’s in a separate gym.”
Though both teams are split up between gyms, they do similar activities to test their skills. The girls do a lot of running and practice drills that resemble what is played in real basketball games.
The girls basketball tryouts started on Monday, Nov. 5 and the results were posted on Wednesday, Nov. 7.
Boys basketball tryouts began on Monday, Nov. 12. Tryouts last for about two to two and a half hours every day.
“We do everything from shooting drills, dribbling drills, fast break drills, defensive drills and running,” junior Malik Garner said.
This year, Garner tried out for the varsity team as he has been on varsity since his freshman year.
“The varsity will go to the main gold gym,” Garner said. “JV and freshmen will put the curtain down to separate the green gym into two courts. Freshmen are at the far end and JV is at the short end.”
Just like girls basketball, tryouts are only three days long. On Nov. 15 the boys learned if they will play on the freshman, JV or varsity team for the season.
Unlike many sports, boys swim doesn’t have cuts. Senior Brian Schultze has been on the swim team for his entire high school career.
“There are no tryouts,” Schultze said. “If you want to be on the team, you’re on the team. You literally just show up and you put your name on the sheet and you come to practices and you’re on the team.”
Anyone can be on the team, but the coach is the one who decides who will swim which event at every meet.
“The coach makes the lineup for every meet, so we have no say,” Schultze said. “He decides what would be the most efficient use of our abilities and then he sets up the lineup accordingly.”
After the swim preseason, the boys official season begins Friday, Nov. 16.
Wrestling is similar to boys swim in that there are no cuts; therefore there are also no tryouts. The season began on Nov. 12 and anyone could come and sign up to be on the team. Varsity and JV are decided on throughout the season. Senior Patrick Bassett will be participating in his last year of wrestling at DHS.
“If you have two people that are in the same weight class and want to wrestle each other, you just set it up during practice, and whoever wins is on varsity,” Bassett said.
