Features

A day in the life: Justyne Wright

Mya Copeland, features writer| March 2, 2020

JV girls basketball morning practices are from 5:45 a.m. to 7 a.m.

When Justyne Wright, sophomore, gets up at 5:10 a.m., she needs to be dressed and in the car by 5:25 a.m. She drinks Gatorade on the way to school, then practices until 7 a.m. After practice, she grabs a donut before getting dressed for school. This is routine for Wright and the rest of the KHS JV girls’ basketball team once a week on morning practice days.

“Waking up for morning practice is a struggle,” Wright said. “Especially having morning practice and having a lot of homework the night before, because then I can’t stay up super late to do it.”

According to Scott Cleer, JV girl’s basketball head coach, because of the length of the season, morning practices can create a break in a player’s normal routine. The basketball season is four months long, longer than most other high school sports.

“Some kids are morning kids, some kids are afternoon kids, so we do that to change it up,” Cleer said. “Sometimes our best practices are in the morning because it’s something different.”

Marianthe Meyer, sophomore, is one of Wright’s teammates. According to Meyer, morning and after school practices affect her stress levels differently.

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[You’ve] got to wake them up. So we put a ball in their hand.

— Scott Cleer

“With morning practice, I usually feel a little out of it, but less stressed than with afternoon practice,” Meyer said. “With afternoon practice, I feel overloaded because at the end of the day I’m aware of how much homework I have.”

According to Cleer, it’s important to keep the team moving and awake in the morning. The early morning practices are more focused on ball developmental skills, and the afternoon practices are more team-oriented.

“When you’re asking a kid to practice at 5:45 in the morning, the last thing you want to do is talk and have them sit and listen,” Cleer said. “[You’ve] got to wake them up. So we put a ball in their hand.”

Although morning practices can result in a more alert mind due to the exercise, some players say they can also lead to a harder crash. For Wright, the fatigue hits around lunch.

“Morning practice can do a lot for a student because it really does exercise our brains and gives us time to wake us up a little bit before we have school,” Wright said. “It kind of kills a student throughout the day because you’re going and you’re trying to stay awake, but you’re becoming tired.”

Both Wright and Meyer said morning practices can be a much-needed change of pace. According to Meyer, getting ready for school after practice is the most fun part.

“Morning practice can really affect [you] differently depending on how you’re feeling,” Wright said. “If you’re going through a hard time, if you don’t want to do it anymore or if you’re just having fun with it.”