Getting Back into the Swing of Things By Eric Dietsche As the college offseason comes to a close and the professionals finish up their first major of the year, we all start heading back to the courts en masse. However, playing in college and trying to get your game to its optimal level is not your only challenge this time of year, especially when you are at a school located in the northwest area of rural Massachusetts, in the middle of the Berkshires. Perhaps an even more formidable challenge to us would be vying for time in the field house. At this time, every team needs to try to get time in there to get their teams ready for competition. We have the track and field team, community programs, junior lacrosse programs and other children’s programs that have time reserved in the only indoor athletic location on campus. Although we have some challenges to
deal with during our training, Williams College offers a Winter Study program, in which students take only one class for a month. Usually, this class will be taught by either a visiting professor, a community member that would be considered an expert in a certain field (for example, we have pottery and glassblowing classes that are taught by community members who own businesses in the area), or a professor from the college who will teach a class that is not within their normal field. We have had a history professor teaching a class on the history of rock and roll, a math professor teaching a class on atheism, and various other professors who are able to pursue some of their other interests and spread that interest to the students during this month-long class. Given the fact that you, the student, are only taking one class for a month, you have much
more free time than you normally would during the regular semester. This time gives us the opportunity to do whatever we would like, which would usually be one of the workouts that we received at the beginning of the offseason (but, of course, there were some other activities thrown in as well, such as extensive Super Smash Brothers tournaments, sledding, skiing, and occasionally, some real work). In short, Winter Study at Williams College offers students a chance to pursue other interests, while not allowing them to completely lose touch with the idea of doing work altogether. Since we have started training again, we look forward to our spring break trip, which is the opening of the season’s competitive play. The season will officially start again on Feb. 15, at which point, the courts up here will most definitely still be covered by a thick sheet of continued on page 11
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Long Island Tennis Magazine • March/April 2010