This summer, many of the fall sports across Torrance High School spent the hot days preparing for their upcoming seasons. After intense training during their time off from school, many student athletes are setting their goals and their sights on competing in their respective sports soon.
Take Noah Hokama, now a sophomore on the cross country team who spent a week in Mammoth Lakes training with a few members of the team.“It’s nice that I was able to go to Mammoth and get better, physically and mentally,” he says. Hokama ran a 17:21 at the recent 3-mile Cow Run at John Glenn High School, and plans to break 17 sometime this season.
With the temperature spiking throughout the summer and now into the fall season, many athletes are starting to feel the heat, and across California many sports are shortening the time they’re allowed to be active. But for Tartar athletes, this hasn’t slowed them down.
“The goal is to make it to CIF and do well in league finals,” Says Andrew Te, one of the seniors on the tennis team. Te spent his summer improving his tennis game with drills, footwork, and endurance training. But it wasn’t without inconveniences: “I had summer school online, and I had to sit for 8 hours straight, which took away from me being able to play a lot more tennis.”
Coach Leong, one of the girl’s tennis coaches, said about the team: “Our assistant coach was able to practice with the girls pretty much every day of summer that we were allowed to,” and she thinks that they’re “pretty well prepared” for the upcoming season.
“Our assistant coach worked a lot on groundstrokes with them so they are prepared for any shot that comes towards them, and so hopefully they will not panic in a match and know exactly what to do with any ball they’re given.” Leong says.
Cross Country and Tennis athletes were part of the more than 400 athletes who participated in summer sports activities this year.
Myriah Henry, manager of the football team, says the team spent weeks preparing for the season: “Over the summer, they have summer camp, where they train the incoming freshman, Monday through Friday, four to six, and they have a lot of scrimmages where they invite different schools.” As manager, Henry records and works the scoreboard for their scrimmages.
Now that they’ve put in the work, Torrance athletes have a promising season ahead of them, and some sports, like football and volleyball, are already in full swing with games in the coming weeks, with football currently undefeated 3-0.
For more information on upcoming games and competitions for every sport on campus, check out the daily bulletin on the Torrance High Website.
