Staying Active in Winter

Alternative pastimes

Players in unconventional sports plan for winter season

Ameera Tai taiame000@hsestudents.org

As winter rolls around, many athletes begin preparing for the start of their sport’s season, this includes those not o ered by the school. Ice hockey, gure skating and skiing are just a few alternative winter sports that have grown in popularity recently. Senior Helen Myers has been gure skating since she was four and competed since she was seven. “I picked a sport not o ered by the school because I like the individual aspect of [it],” Myers said. Some winter sports, like gure skating, are independent. is allows for personal expression and developing individual skills. According to junior Hollis Kolb, he prefers gure skating over team sports as it allows for personal exploration through di erent routines he is able to help choreograph alongside his coach. “It’s a very personal sport,” Kolb said. “You get to pick your own music and [routines are] supposed to have a story. at was really interesting to me.” Individual sports also allow players to meet others from outside their community, even states away, for their competition. Despite the activity being separate from the school, Kolb believes it to be a positive, as it has led to connections through his coaches of colleges he would like to attend. To him, these connections would not be possible without his involvement in gure skating. However, not all winter sports are individual, as sports like ice hockey allow people from many di erent schools to meet and play together as a team, something that would not happen within school sports. Former hockey player junior Hannah Morcombe rst became involved in the sport when she joined her friend’s team at Indy Fuel Tank, a popular ice arena in Fishers. She emphasized how few girl’s ice hockey teams there were, building a stronger bond between the players on her team. “Especially being a girl, there weren’t a lot of options for hockey,” said Morcombe. “A lot of my friends were on the fuel tank team, [and] being able to work with my friends on the same team as them was really fun.” With any sport, it takes lots of practice and patience to improve, but both gure skating and ice hockey require players to be pro cient at skating prior to learning the sport. Kolb notes that this can be a long process, but was worth it once he had seen his improvement. “People think [skating] is a lot harder than it is,” Morcombe said. “If you put a lot of time into it and take little steps [to] focus on speci c techniques to master, it gets a lot easier.” A major aspect of both ice hockey and gure skating is the time and energy spent on competitions by players. Since the activities are not sanctioned through the school, there are fewer people aware of the competitive nature, leading to miscommunication on what the sport is truly about. “[Figure] skating has allowed me to [have] more con dence,” said Myers. “[I can] do what I want, and be con dent in what I’m doing.”