With spring break coming up soon, most students look forward to relaxing at home or traveling around the globe. However, there are some students that have to stay in town due to work or sports. Normally, the players on the varsity baseball team stay in town for their four games throughout the break, but this year is different. This year, the team only has one game on Tuesday, allowing many of the players to be able to travel during the break for the first time in a while.

For many varsity sports, commitment is a key part of the team, and many athletes have to make sacrifices for their team. For the varsity baseball team, Coach Scott Davis has a rule about missing games that has been in place for years.

“Our rule for baseball is if you miss a game, you sit a game,” Davis said. “This rule does not apply for being sick, going to a funeral etc.”

With this rule in place, many baseball players have to stay in town for break and play in the usual four games in order to not have to miss four more. Because of this, the seniors on the team miss their annual spring break trip out of the country. It’s nothing new for the team or any of the other varsity teams for that matter.

“Most years we play 3-5 games over spring break so we need our players to stay in town to play the games – just like basketball has games over winter break, and their players are expected to stay in town and play their games over winter break,” Davis said.

However, this year is different. The way the scheduling worked out will allow the baseball players to get a 5 day break, giving them a chance to go out of town.

“I like the change a lot, because it lets us have a break from baseball and it’s something new that we have never done before,” senior Eric White said. “It gives us a chance to go somewhere with friends or family.”

Most years, there are seniors and other players who choose to go on trips anyways and decide to quit or suffer through sitting on the bench. Approaching this season, some seniors decided to quit the team going into the season, all for different reasons ranging from injuries to personal choices. Senior Tyler James quit the team a couple months ago due to multiple reasons but with the new scheduling isn’t changing his mind.

“I feel like the change is a little too late because of how I’ve personally decided to not play two months ago, but I don’t want to go back just because he changed it,” James said.

From the loss of some players, this raises questions on what the team will look like this year. With seniors Blake Seigel and Daniel Bernstein not playing as well, James says this will make an impact.

“Especially if you look at our schedule which is way harder than last year, it makes the kids filling up the open spots more nervous because they have to live up to the potential that the previous kids did,” James said. “So I think it will make a huge, huge impact.”

Despite the loss of some players, many of the other players on the team think this break will be good for the team, though they do know that there may be consequences. Now being upperclassmen, juniors Anthony Klein and Sam Ladd are used to the team now and understand that this break could affect the team’s skills.

“I think that it will impact the team by just making us more relaxed because of the break, but it also means we won’t get in practices that could potentially help us,” Klein said. Due to the number of games usually scheduled, the players easily burnout after the long week.

“I think that it will keep the team more fresh for the entire season, since we get to go on break,” Klein said.

In the end, the change in schedule was all due to luck. For the seniors especially, they’re able to spend their last spring break before college with friends and family, despite past years of seniors missing out on their trips. Even though this may not be a permanent change for the team, the players are more than happy for this opportunity to get a little break. “Every year is different, and this year happened to work out that we could give a few days off,” Davis said.