Spring sports are not the only activities at Simpson that are going on this spring. Fall sports such as football, volleyball and men’s and women’s soccer are still hard at work as well with spring team practices.

Athletes and coaches alike say these practices are very beneficial, as they not only keep the athletes focused, but also in shape.

“It is very beneficial to us as a team,” football coach Jim Glogowski said. “It gives them the opportunity to get back onto the field. It gets them involved in football again.”

These practices are short and limited. The NCAA has rules on how many practices coaches can have. They only have a certain number of practices, but the teams get a lot out of them.

“We only have eight practices and the first one is April 1,” Glogowski said. “It is mainly a review of plays. It also reaffirms us where we are at.”

These rules were just instated last year, so this will be the second year of spring practices.

“It started last year in the Iowa Conference,” Glogowski said. “We can have no more than three practices a week. They can only be two hours long on weekdays and four hours on weekends.”

The players on the football team see the benefits as well, even if they can’t run full practices as they would in the fall.

“It is a lot of team stuff, but we also have individual drills that we do,” junior linebacker Cody Jensen said. “We do pass skeleton or run through plays. We just basically polish up and fine-tune.”

These practices help the football team shake the offseason rust off.

“It really just helps us get focused on the upcoming fall season,” Jensen said.

Volleyball also just instated this rule last year as well.

“We start on March 15 and have eight practices,” junior libero Rebecca Westphal said. “We do basically the same stuff as we do in season. We do drills, but we also do a lot more fun stuff.”

Volleyball also benefits greatly from these spring practices, as it helps them take assessment of the coming year’s team.

“They [the practices] are good because it gets us back into volleyball mode,” Westphal said. “Everyone likes it, and it helps us see what we have.”

The soccer teams also go through spring workouts. Their practices start in mid-March.

“We start in the middle of March and get somewhere around 10 practices,” sophomore defender Mike Miller said. “We just work on foot skills. It is nothing too serious.”

These practices also help them get back into the swing of things.

“They are pretty beneficial,” Miller said. “It is good to get touches so you don’t get rusty. It is nice to play with the team and have structure again.”

These teams also can do activities without coaches present.

“We have short-sided games without our coaches there,” Miller said. “Otherwise we just work out as a team.”

The football team also can have player-run practices.

“In the past we have done some non-coach-organized things,” Jensen said. “The players mainly would just go out and do 7-on-7. We also have a lot of players who stay here and do our workouts.”

Simpson’s fall sports will try to make the most out of their practice opportunities this spring. They hope this in turn will greatly help them in the following fall season.