November 18, 2021 | Sports
STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN UNIQUE SPORTS BY NICHOLAS MITCHINSON
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Co-Editor-in-Chief of Print
alking into the arena, the stadium lights beam down on the rodeo contestants tacking up their horses and getting their ropes ready. The spectators and the rodeo competitors are all dressed in jeans, boots, button-up shirts and Stetson hats. It isn’t one particular sound that makes the arena loud; it is the combination of the goats’ nickering, the horses’ neighing, the announcer’s voice, the music playing and the shouts of the rodeo contestants. Kaneland High School students participate in a wide variety of sports, whether they are through the high school or not. While there may be more participants in basketball, volleyball, football and cross country, there are also students at Kaneland who compete in less widely known sports. Rodeo, for example, is a sport that may not have as many participants as others, but there are some students here who compete. Senior Kaitlyn Swims began her rodeo career in November of 2020 thanks to the convincing of her friends. Starting to rodeo at this age is very late because most people are either born into it or start at a very young age. “I started doing rodeo just to see if I would like it. I was very hesitant to join because everyone was so good and that made me scared and nervous, but once I started I fell in love with it instantly,” Swims said. Rodeoing is a sport consisting of many different events that allow people to demonstrate their riding and roping skills. One event that Swims competes in and takes very seriously is goat tying. She trains in general almost every day, but she also specifically trains to get better at goat tying. “When I go out and tie goats, it could only be fifteen minutes, or it could be up to an hour. It just depends on how that day is going. Before I finish the training, I usually try to make three good goat runs,” Swims said. Rodeoing is not the only unique sport that requires serious and extensive training for improvement. Junior Ella Kuffel weightlifts outside of school in her family gym at home. She typically trains for about two hours a day and six days a week. Kuffel originally started to weightlift during March of 2020 due to all of the free time she had on her hands because of the pandemic. She is hoping to start participating in weightlifting competitions in May of 2022. The competitions are not through Kaneland and are open
Page design by Braden Babka
Photo courtesy of Adam Gerlach
Senior Adam Gerlach skates after the puck during a hockey game. Gerlach has developed new friendships by playing with students from other schools.
for anyone who wants to sign up. “For my first competition, I am not necessarily worried about how well I do compared to the other competitors. I just want to see how it feels to compete and just get to see what the competition I am up against is like,” Kuffel said. Kuffel also has experience playing other sports and is involved in wrestling, tennis and softball. Since she has experienced team sports as well as weightlifting, she has been able to see the variety of differences between team and individual sports. “I think I like weightlifting because it’s more of an individual sport, and it is not as stressful as team sports can be,” Kuffel said. Kuffel also realizes that having a weightlifting team at Kaneland is probably not possible, but there are other ways to get people together who all enjoy the sport. “We probably wouldn’t be able to have a team at the school because there are no other school teams to compete against. It would be nice to have a club to meet more people interested in lifting,”
Kuffel said. Hockey is another sport that is less popular at Kaneland but still played by some local students. Senior Adam Gerlach has been playing hockey for the past 10 years and was introduced to the sport by going to his older brother’s hockey practices. When Gerlach was at one of his brother’s practices, one of the coaches saw him and asked if he wanted to give it a try, and from the beginning Gerlach was ahead of the competition. “One of the coaches came up to me and asked if I wanted to skate. Usually when they do that, the coaches expect you to not be able to skate at all. But once I got on the ice they sent me right to the medium level skating, which never happens for beginner skaters,” Gerlach said. Instead of having their own team, Kaneland hockey players can combine with students from some other nearby schools to form one. The team name is the Fox Valley Hawks, and it consists of players from five different schools: Kaneland, Saint Charles East, Saint Charles North, Batavia and Geneva. The team usually practices on Tuesday nights and Friday afternoons, and then they compete in games on Saturdays and Sundays at either the Fox Valley Ice Arena or the West Dundee Ice Arena. Gerlach is one of the few Kaneland hockey players on the team, and because it is a combined group many people at Kaneland do not even realize this team exists. “Since it’s a combined high school team, a lot of people don’t actually know that we have a hockey team, which leads to no one coming out and supporting our team,” Gerlach said.
Photo courtesy of Kaitlyn Swims
Senior Kaitlyn Swims starts her trail course event at the Lazy E Arena in Guthrie, OK. Swims qualified for Nationals during her first year of rodeoing and has made some of her best memories in these competitons.
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