Winter Sports Train Off Season

As the fall season came to a close, Deerfield athletes began preparing for the upcoming winter season. From the squash courts, hockey rink to the erg room, student athletes across campus have been training, building skill, strength, and camaraderie before the first whistle of the official season.

Squash is among the winter sports offered at Deerfield. “When our program attracts college-bound athletes, it’s become increasingly common for the players to feel the pressure to perform and maintain a high level in preparation for their season,” Boys’ Varsity Squash Head Coach Ryan Tyree said. 

This fall, the Boys’ Varsity Squash team continued its typical level of commitment to off-season training. The team holds captain’s practice every Friday and, sometimes Saturdays. Furthermore, they facilitate occasional, optional fitness sessions. Captain Kyle Yang ’26 said, “Everyone has squash as their main sport and is motivated to improve. It makes our team practice time arrangement more flexible.” 

According to Yang, organizing the off-season practices was not an easy effort. “The biggest challenge about leading off-season practice is that nobody has an obligation to come,” Yang noted. Nevertheless, much of the team still showed up. “The attendance has not been a problem. We are normally missing at most one or two players,” he added. 

Coach Tyree echoed these thoughts. “I noticed that although the off-season training is individualized and therefore does not always naturally transfer to team building,” he added, “Overlap for the players at the facility on a regular basis, the team does benefit from the camaraderie and spirit built early on during off-season.”Despite not being able to coach due to athletic conference leagues’ rules and guidelines, Coach Tyree has taken part as a resource for the team: offering tactical advice and helping with mental preparation.

Most importantly, he emphasized, “Maintaining an overall level or quality of play is particularly beneficial for injury prevention, so that once the season begins, our top athletes can lead the way, and feel good about the shape that they are in.”

The Girls’ Varsity Hockey team, too, used the off-season window to prepare for the approaching regular season, starting off with eight matches across the first three weeks.

Discussing the team’s fall training focus, Fall Athletic Concentration Coach Timothy McVaugh explained, “Hockey is somewhat unique in that skating is crucial, and the only way to improve skating is by getting on the ice.” However, neither him nor Girls’ Varsity Hockey Head Coach Brooke Fernandez are allowed to coach the group on the ice until after Choate day, the end of the fall season. Despite this restriction, the team organized off-season training. The sessions provided time for athletes to work on stride mechanics and strengths that are otherwise hard to focus on during the game-intensive winter. 

While off-season training seems to be more individualized, the fall development league, consisting of five main schools —Salisbury, Taft, Westminster, Frederick Gunn, and Deerfield— offers an ideal opportunity for schools to compete against one another on weekends.“The ups and downs of that experience helped those players develop closer connections with one another,” said Coach McVaugh. 

For the Deerfield rowing program, training is a year round process. The team was dedicated to the sport in the fall and will continue their momentum in winter to build the foundation needed for their spring season. “Rowing is a sport that requires a great deal of strength and endurance, so the more time we spend training, the better off we will be because we’re fitter and stronger,” said Boys Varsity Rower Zander Auth ’26. 

Winter rowing is a smaller winter program at Deerfield composed of roughly twenty top upperclassmen rowers, who value the additional off-season time for concentrated training. Underclassmen rowers, too, showed dedication to the sport. While young athletes are encouraged to explore other sports to become more well-rounded, they typically erg during their free time, after co-curriculars or on weekends. 

Despite the off-season program operating with a small roster, the training intensity remains high. The team holds six scheduled practice sessions every week, Monday through Saturday, taking off-season training as a great advantage to focus on physical conditioning. Rowers on the team do steady-state workouts to build a strong aerobic base which reserves more time for the team to work on techniques on water in the spring. Auth explained,“If you think of it like a pyramid, the wider the base is, the higher the peak can be.” He added,  “Winter training is about developing that base, building fitness and strength, so that in the spring, we can reach a higher peak in performance.” 

Across all winter sports, off-season training is used to build physical foundation and mental readiness for the season yet to come. The hours dedicated to training built the groundwork for the regular season. All winter varsity sport teams will officially kick off the regular season this week, with schedules posted on the Student Bulletin. Deerfield teams and athletes step into competition not just fit, but focused and connected following months of unseen effort.