During high school, student-athletes must work hard to manage all of their work, but playing two or even three sports on top of school is a whole different story. While playing two sports can be rewarding and a lot of fun, it can be hard to manage and the transition between each sport can be complicated. 

Redwood head varsity baseball coach Mike Firenzi has many multi-sport athletes on his team this season. 

“The two-sport athlete is almost being penalized now because if their team does well, they overlap into their next season a lot,” Firenzi said. 

Senior and three-sport athlete Kody Vasquez explains how transitioning from one sport to another can be difficult on both your training and your body. From switching between football, varsity basketball and varsity lacrosse, Vasquez has experienced it all. 

“Even though I’m training year-round, I have to recondition myself for each sport,” Vazquez said.

 This is an issue when athletes are expected to change sports the day after an emotional playoff loss, especially for seniors like Vasquez.

“I go from getting tackled and hit every day to 24 hours later doing more short sprints and running up and down the basketball court. It’s pretty hard,” Vasquez said. 

There are many specific skills you will need in each sport that differs from another, for example, Coach Firenzi explains why adjusting to another sport is difficult.

“In a sport like baseball, [the transition] is difficult because there is a lot of timing involved that takes a while to adjust to, so when you come out late from another sport, you’re a little behind everybody else,” Firenzi said.

When these players start their season late, it’s harder for them to jump into the starting lineup. 

“The basketball team had been training for a while in the fall, and had already played a few games, so when I came in so late, the starters [were] already selected and everybody was more prepared. You have to work a lot harder to take those spots,” Vasquez said. 

While it is harder to regain starting spots, Firenzi explained that if you’re good enough to start, then you will.

Many sophomores and some freshmen get the opportunity to be pulled up from their junior varsity (JV) team to varsity, so they can experience what it is like before their junior or sophomore year.

Sophomore Chase Johnson, who was on the JV basketball team, was pulled up this season to the varsity basketball team. As a crucial starter on the varsity baseball team, the overlap between the sports forced Johnson to make a tough decision.

“While it was a great opportunity to play basketball on the next level, after talking it over with [Coach] Mike, we decided it would be better to say no so that I could go right to baseball,” Johnson said.

Many freshmen and sophomores that get called up from JV to varsity don’t ever get to play or even suit up. 

“If [Johnson] was going to go up to the varsity and actually play and contribute in their postseason, by all means I’d love for him to go. But to go up there and watch on the bench for three weeks and put him behind as a starting player in baseball, it didn’t make much sense to me,” Firenzi said.

The boys’ varsity basketball team played their first MCAL playoff game two days after the official start of spring sports, and their season ended during a loss to Oakland Tech, just over three weeks into the spring season. 

Vasquez has a lot of experience in NCS, through big football and basketball playoff runs, and he feels there are some issues.

“I had to miss the first three lacrosse games and starting the playoffs earlier in the basketball season could have been helpful and benefited many athletes in similar situations as mine,” Vasquez said.

While there are flaws with the way playoffs are set up, changing them will be very hard, as the main solution would be cutting seasons shorter.