Spring break: to most college students it means minimal activity and maximum inebriation, but to athletes at USM it means something a little different.
Whether it’s a trip to New York to finally play on a grass field or a cross-country trek to Arizona where cacti and baseball rule the day, athletes and coaches from USM spend their spring breaks away from the classroom, but still with the university.
For freshman pitcher Jimmy Knicknair (Glenburn), spring break meant being away from his family on Easter and traveling past the Mississippi River for the first time.
“It was different for me,” Knicknair said. “Usually we have a small family dinner.”
This year, his family was 3,000 miles away, and his dinners were spent with the 30-member team.
“If I didn’t have a spring trip I’d probably just be at home,” said the south-paw, who partook in 14 games in 12 days. “I’d much rather spend 12 days playing the game I love in Arizona.”
Knicknair and his baseball team are not alone. The softball, women’s lacrosse and women’s track and field teams all took spring break trips going at least as far as New York.
Freshman Erica Higginbotham (Winthrop, MA) got her first taste of the Big Apple when she traveled with her cohort of lacrosse players on a three-day trip to New York, where they grappled with lacrosse powerhouses Manhattanville and SUNY-Farmingdale, and spent some time hanging out in the city.
“The subway was the best part,” she said. “It frightened some people, especially the ones from Vermont and Maine. It was crazy with all of us running around with our Southern Maine shirts on. People were just looking at us.”
Knicknair and Higginbotham are both freshmen, and the trips gave them the chance to get used to playing their sport at the collegiate level, as well as some time to get to know their teammates better.
“I knew a lot of the girls from ice hockey, but I got to know the rest,” said Higginbotham. “All of the girls are awesome and there are a lot of different personalities.”
While Higginbotham and the lacrosse team marveled at the Statue of Liberty and the pace of life in Manhattan and Ground Zero, Knicknair, all the away across the country, was struck by the greenness of the grass, the flatness of the deserts and the professionalism of his teammates.
“I learned a lot by just watching the older guys and the how they approach different situations during the games,” said Knicknair of his collegiate debut.
But all of these great experiences do not come easily. The planning and logistical end of spring break travel is placed largely in the hands of the players and coaches.
In order for the softball and baseball teams to make their trips to Florida and Arizona a reality, each athlete was responsible for raising $1,000 dollars to foot the cost of airfare, hotel and other expenses.
While Coach Bonny Brown-Denico of the softball team jokingly calls the whole process “a pain in the butt,” she is quick to point the importance spring trips.
“Team building is huge,” she said, “trying to figure out what personalities go well with one another is important. It’s fun to watch the excitement building up before the trip. The girls all have a big countdown when our preseason starts in January.”
For well-established programs like the baseball and softball teams, fundraising has become part-and-parcel of the spring trip. Coach Ed Flaherty and his baseball team sell advertisements in their media guide, write letters to local businesses soliciting money and hold a raffle in order to reach their fundraising goals.
But for teams like coach Sue Frost’s women’s lacrosse team, only in its seventh year of existence, the task can become a little bit more daunting, which forces more realistic expectations.
With the funds to travel to warmer locales lacking, coach Frost took her squad to an area near and dear to her heart: her home state of New York.
But just because they didn’t travel by jet or enjoy the luxuries of tropical temperatures doesn’t mean that the trip was any less successful.
“I brought them to my house and my parents made us all dinner. We pulled up in the big coach bus and we were the talk of the town,” Frost said.
The trip to New York, though modest, is a benchmark for the program’s progress.
Just two years removed from having their spring trip located in the Costello Sports Complex, where the then-first-year-coach Frost orchestrated a speaker on sports nutrition, a self-defense class and held double-session practices, the team is happy with their progress.
When asked about her friends on the softball team, Higginbotham was quick to point out a few discrepancies.
“They all come back wicked tan, so I made sure that I got my tanning bed minutes in,” she said with a smile.
Regardless of the effort involved and the sacrifice of a “traditional” spring break, athletes and coaches alike are happy to forego Cancun and Panama Beach for a chance to grow closer as a team.
Brown-Denico tells the story of her softball players dressing up in hideously old-fashioned clothing bought at a nearby thrift shop, and Frost says that she showed plenty of videos on the bus that gave the new recruits a glimpse of what her team is all about.
Pulling out a scrapbook modeled after the “Burn Book” from the movie Mean Girls, Fost demonstrates that athletes do have a spring break.
It’s just a little different.