During the past summer, students participated in numerous athletic activities ranging from sports performance workouts held by Head Football Coach Ron Forbes to team-specific leagues.

Instead of inviting all students to participate in the sports performance workouts formerly known as Eagle Iron, Head Football Coach Ron Forbes now offers summer workouts by team. The program gives student-athletes the opportunity to stay in shape over the summer with a series of conditioning exercises done in the training room.

Forbes instituted the change to the summer workout program; now, athletes are given workout routines that will help them improve in their particular sport.

“The workouts, that’s where it’s kind of improved, everybody used to just come to one big general workout, now they’re tailored to the sports that they play.”

In addition to Eagle Iron, basketball summer league practices also took place at the Upper School. For over a month, students practiced on Mondays and Wednesdays for two hours and then played games on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sophomore Jordan Thompson attended the league this past summer. For the first time in the program’s history, the league was also open to girls.

“I feel that playing in summer league was beneficial to the girls’ basketball program at Harker, as the freshman were able to meet the returning players and we were all able to bond before the school year started,” Jordan Thompson (10) said.

Harker’s Varsity boys basketball team had a similar practice and game schedule as the girls but more players.

“The number of people on the team fluctuated due to summer vacation and summer internship schedules interfering with the basketball schedule, but for the most part, on varsity there were 10 players,” basketball player Jordan Goheen (10) said.

Cross country, like basketball, had team workouts as well. Harker’s cross country team’s coaches offered conditioning workouts during the summer for students playing the sport in the fall season. The workouts took place mainly at Rancho San Antonio Park in Cupertino, where students practiced both short and long distance running.

Since these workouts were optional, the coaches gave students who were unable to attend weekly training workout routines for them to practice on their own.

“We had runners [vacationing] in Kenya, Pakistan, Nepal, France, India, and Russia. They still kept up,” Head Varsity Cross Country Coach Scott Chisam said.

Chisam hopes that the girls’ and boys’ teams can both reach CCS Championships, as well as have runners Corey Gonzales (12) and Niki Iyer (10) repeat their victories from the previous season.

In July, the cross country team practiced on Tuesdays and Thursdays which gradually went up to practices from Monday through Thursday. Rather than long runs, the team focused more on interval training, speed, and tempo workouts. Sophomore Niki Iyer, third place CCS finisher last season, understands that summer training is vital to prepare for the season.

“I think that summer training is a must. Cross country is a really short season, considering that it [national championships] ends in December,” Niki said. “That being said, there’s not a whole lot of time to start putting on base when you return back to school, which is like the beginning of September. Basically, not having summer training [equals] not having enough time to prepare for the season.”

While there were no organized team practices for golf over the course of this summer, Head Golf Coach Ie-Chen Cheng ensured that his players would be prepared for the upcoming season by giving each golfer a summer workout plan that catered to their individual goals. Whether a player’s goals be working on their putting or simply getting more practice; Cheng’s overarching objective was that his players work on their weaknesses to build confidence.

Cheng is looking to match and exceed last season’s success this year; “We had a fabulous season last year in that everyone worked really hard and improved tremendously. It’s one of those teams where I was so proud of every team member, because the girls were tested, yet remained very committed. We don’t have many female golfers, but what we lack in quantity, we make up for in character and quality,” Cheng said.

Throughout the summer, open gyms and team fitness workouts were held by Head Volleyball Coach Theresa “Smitty” Smith to give her volleyball players a chance to stay in shape and prepare for the upcoming fall volleyball season.

Not only did these summer sports opportunities work towards strengthening individual students’ abilities, they helped improve the school’s teams as a whole.