Podcast KH CH-4

The hosts of the Sports Shorts Podcast discuss the busy schedule of Division 1 football players at North Dakota State University. They talk about the intense daily routine during fall camp, which includes meetings, practice, and workouts from early morning until late at night. They also mention the challenges of balancing classes and game preparation during the season. In addition, they touch on the winter workouts and the schedule for spring ball. Overall, the life of a Division 1 football player is described as hectic and demanding. Hello and welcome to the Sports Shorts Podcast. We are your hosts. I'm Carson Hegerle. And I'm Keegan Huber. And Sports Shorts is brought to you by the Sports Management Program at North Dakota State University and supported by the Department of Health, Nutrition, and Exercise Science. The topic we will be talking about today is the free time within Division 1 football at North Dakota State University. For our sports fact of the day, it's a boxing title fight. In 1987, on August 1st, Mike Tyson outpointed Tony Tucker in 12 rounds. Yeah, I'm not really sure why that's too important, Keegan, but... I just thought it was a cool fact for August 1st, talking about Mike Tyson. I mean, he does have a... as you guys are watching this, it's already came out against... a fight against Jake Paul on Netflix. Yeah, well, Jake Paul probably won, so... I don't know, it's... to be honest, I don't think anyone's going to really be a winner of the fight. I think it's going to be pretty similar to this Tony Tucker fight where no one gets knocked out and just going to be by decision. Okay, anyway, there's enough of that. Let's get into our first segment for this episode. And for our first segment, we'll be talking about the mental health stressors we deal with. I think we both agree that fall camp is probably one of the most stressful times during the year, so I think we'll start off talking about that. And honestly, the schedule is all day, every day. There's obviously Monday through Sunday where you think that you're going to have the weekends off, and there is no weekends. Like, it's day one of fall camp, day two, day six, day seven, all the way through for about a month long. And the schedule starts off at 6 a.m., you're going to wake up, you're going to have breakfast at 620, and then you have meetings all before practice. So, meetings will start around 7 a.m., and you'll go through basically every specialty there are. So, PAT, field goal, punt D, punt, kickoff, kickoff return, and then when all those are done, you'll have a team meeting, a position meeting, and now that all those meetings are done, now you'll head over to the facility to get ready for practice. Before practice, then you have about a 20-minute walk-through, 10-minute warm-up, and then a two-hour practice, or as we like to say, 24-period practice. And I don't know about you, Kirsten, but those 24-period practices, they feel a little bit longer than two hours. They get so long, and it's a lot of mental stress, but it's also, like, the physical stress is unreal, but the mental stress is also just as bad. I don't know, I don't even know what's worse. So, that practice starts at 10, and then we'll get done at 12. And so, lunch is then from 12 until 2, but even though you're done with practice at 2, you still got to get undressed, you got to shower, you got to keep your body right, so you got to, you're still going to be at the facility for at least another 30 minutes, whether it's treatment, or just leave, or whatever it is at the facility. Yeah, so we get done with practice at 12, so I think you might have said 2, but yeah, we get done with practice at 12, and we got two hours in between there, so, I mean, it's really not two hours, but, so if you can find a time for a nap during that, like, you, you did good. Yeah, whether that's five minutes, or whether that's a big 30-minute day, those are, those are the winners that keep you going. And then, obviously, you need to make sure your roommates are awake, or you're awake, have plenty of alarms set, because before you know it, at 3 o'clock, you're going to have lift. Me and Carson play different positions, so I'm, I'm a corner. Then I play wide receiver. So, let's say I lift at 3 o'clock, Carson would actually have meetings at 3 o'clock, so defense lifts together, and then offense lifts together, and then it will switch, so then when my lift is done, I'll go to meetings, and when his meetings are done, he'll go to lift. And so, we have that from basically 3 until 6, until our dinner time. So, we get dinner at 6, got a 30-minute dinner, and then before you know, we're back to all of our meetings. So, we'll have all the special teams meetings again, position meetings, and those are from 7 o'clock until 9 o'clock, and then just when you think the night's over, then you've got 30-minute, 30-minute walk through after that. So, really, the day is from 6 a.m. until 9.30, and you're really not even back to your room until about 10. We have a walk through at 9 p.m. guys, which is kind of, kind of unreal. We go to the, we go back to the practice facility just so we can walk through plays again for about a half an hour. It just gets to be a long day, and yeah. And that is the daily, day one, day three, day seven, no matter what it is during fall camp, it is on repeat. And that's fall camp. So, after that, it starts to get like a little, a little less busy, but we still, then we just start up, start up with season. So, during the season, the schedule is, is different because we have classes and stuff, so we can't be 100% like just doing football, but we, we still wake up almost every morning for, to start meetings, and then after that, we'll have classes throughout the day, and then we'll have more meetings through, start about like three-ish. And on top of that, too, in between your special teams meetings, your classes, and then the afternoon meetings before practice, you also got to have lift in there sometimes. So, whether that's an 8 a.m. lift, an 11 o'clock lift, a 1 o'clock lift right before meetings, you still got to get your lift in. So, that gets a lot, gets to be a lot, too. But then, on top of that, then we got practice, and that, those, those tend to go pretty long, depending on the day. Like, Tuesdays are usually really long. You'll get, I mean, you'll get out of the facility past 7. Yeah, a little joke we like to say, that's, that's bloody Tuesdays. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so obviously, we have practices Monday through Thursday, but now that we're in season, we also have games every Saturday. So, those Monday through Thursday practices, and then Fridays, a walkthrough, and kind of a game prep, get ready for the game, whether it's walkthroughs for a home game, or if we're traveling to the away game, and then doing walkthroughs in the hotel, or somehow we get field access. Mm-hmm. Just because we don't practice on Friday, it's, it's not like an off day. We still got stuff throughout the whole day, and then, obviously, on Saturday, like, that's our, that's our game. You wake up early, even if your game's at 2, you're still waking up at 7, 8 a.m., getting ready, prepping for the game, got to go to meetings in the morning before the game, get breakfast, your pregame meal in, and then, obviously, it's the game, and then after the game, depending on if it's a, if it's an away game, or a home game, if it's an away game, we're gonna travel back, usually that night, but sometimes we're not getting back till 12 a.m., so your Sunday is already pretty much gone, so you're gonna sleep for a while. If it's a home game, that's usually a little bit nicer, because we'll get back at a decent time that night, and then kind of have the night to ourselves, and recover on Sunday. Yeah, Sunday, then, normally is the day that you want to sleep in, but your body's hurting still pretty good, so you want to, you need to get treatment, need to get some form of recovery, and whether it's going to the tub, stretching, just walking around, get up, and get moving, because before you know it, the whole next week is about to restart. Monday is the next day of meetings, lifts, practice, everything's just full go, it's day after day, week after week. And then after the season, then we start to get into kind of, it's called winter workouts, and that's, that's more of just like lifting, running, I think we lift four times a week, and then we run twice a week, which is 6 a.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays, depending what group you're in, or Tuesdays and Thursdays, somewhere, somewhere along those lines, and so winter, winter workouts, workouts aren't, aren't too terrible, but yeah, it's, it's still grinding, you're still very busy, and you're obviously very tired with still waking up and working out at 6 a.m., and the whole point of winter is kind of to get you in shape for spring ball, and that's going to be the next thing we're kind of talking about, is the spring ball schedule, and spring ball schedule goes for, I believe it's five weeks, it's basically the week after spring break until the middle of April, so let's just say the second week in March to the third week in April, and then those are morning practices, morning meetings, so as we're recording this right now, we're actually in spring ball, and we had meetings this morning starting at 545 a.m., and then practice started at 7, and then what time were we done, 9, 930, 9, 930, and then that's when we would start going to class, we have a little, we have a little period in between where we obviously need to go to class, and then after class, then we have meetings again, and then that's after the meetings, that's kind of our day, but then it just restarts, practice every other day, lift every other day, so it gets to be really busy. On top of all that, like throughout the year, we have to get meals in, which is, so we got to go eat at the dining center, younger guys have to get like 15 meals in a week at the dining center, older guys usually 10, so that's also like, that's kind of a, that takes up some time too, which gets us, makes us even more busy, especially with us being off campus, having to, having to go there, keep our weight up, and then getting into summer, summer, summer is usually a little bit more relaxed, the beginning of summer at least, just because we only lift and run for a little while, but then starting to get into July is when we got like captain's practices, lift, runs, starting, starting meetings, and then, yeah, then it kind of just loops around, and then we got fall camp starting up again. Yeah. And now we're going to talk about kind of the free time we have outside of football, which is very limited, but we're going to talk about like what we, what we kind of like to do and stuff like that, but first I'm going to introduce our roommate and one of our teammates, Austin, Austin, you got it. Hey guys, as you guys know, I'm Keegan and Carson's roommate, and I play football here, I'm a linebacker, and my major is women and gender studies, excuse me. Okay, okay, good, good, so keep it going. So in this free time, do you play video games? Like I know I love playing Madden, and that's something that I enjoy doing. Sure, sure, Keegan, I actually do enjoy playing video games. I play Madden. These guys here, they try to get me to play Warzone with them. I'm not as good at speed, though, I'm not as good as them, so I gotta get better and play with them, but not just video games, I have a motorcycle I drive, I enjoy riding that into the sunset. I like working on my truck, I got a truck recently, I'm able to do some stuff with that. I enjoy playing guitar in my free time. I play country and Christian music. How about you guys, what do you guys enjoy? Man of many hobbies over here. So do you have like a girlfriend, you have time for a girlfriend, or how does that work? It's hard, I do have a girlfriend, I try to make time for her, but you know, yeah, I have a girlfriend. You do try to make time for her? I try to make time for her, it doesn't always work out, though. What does she do, is she? Yes, my girlfriend, she plays softball here. Okay, so both very busy people. I'm sure it's also very hard to make time with her with all the movie nights that we be having. Yeah, speaking of. Sometimes we tend to bring our bed out into the living room, and we all watch the movies you've been watching lately, I've got Hunger Games. Yep, we just finished that. Austin never saw any of those, and Carson actually put me on to those last year, so we had to re-watch those this year. What do you guys think of those? Yeah, Hunger Games, I love Hunger Games movies. It was fun, it was interesting. I didn't expect to be like that, it was actually, like, I was into it. Another thing, I know you guys are, we have a roommate that's interested in golf. Keegan, you're interested in golf a little bit. Yeah. But Austin, what about you? Are you into golf at all? No. No? Is it something that you think you could pick up, or just got no interest in it at all? Interesting, couldn't pick up. I feel like a lot of our teammates have been into golf recently. Yeah, I feel like it's just something to, like, I'm obviously from Wisconsin, so I'm a far ways away from home, and it was something I really enjoyed doing last summer, just keeping me busy, especially, like, I'm nine hours away from home, but, like, versus you guys, Carson, you're about an hour away, and then Austin, you're about 15 minutes away. Yeah. So, like, golf is something I kind of do to keep me busy. When you guys go home, what are some of the things you do with having the time being so close? Sure. So, big question, Keegan. I go home, I visit my family, my mom, I've got a younger brother that still lives at home, he's eight, his name is Xander. I visit him a lot, we'll play catch outside. Sorry to cut you off, but you, and you can go home quite a bit, just because you live pretty close, right? Sure, yeah. I go home probably about once or twice a week, which is quite often, compared to guys like Keegan who just can't do that, so. My family lives about 45 minutes away now, so I try to go home every couple weeks on the weekends to see them, but, yeah. Yeah, and then I enjoy having two roommates that are able to have their houses be so close, so I can go to Austin's and have dinner with his family, or go to Carson's, he lives off the lake, so I've never ridden a jet ski, he's got a jet ski, so it's fun to ride on the lake, and that's definitely something I'm looking forward to do as the summer comes. Yeah, well, Austin, do you have anything else to say before we wrap it up? You know what, thank you guys for having me. Well, I have one question for you, Austin. What is your favorite place that you and your girlfriend like to go out to eat out here in Fargo? Oof. When you have time. Well, when we both have time, tell you what, I'll give you two answers, okay? I would say we like going, sorry, three, can't make up my mind. Nope, I need one, I need one. Okay, so Crave has really good appetizers, but the Tavern is where we go for a meal, or like a brunch. Okay, okay, I'll have to check those places out. Probably, you know what, she's the type of girl, I'll just get her a big, big ol' fat, big pack of McDonald's. It's what she likes, guys, don't judge her. One of the top places is McDonald's. McDonald's is up there. Mine is low-key probably McDonald's. I like McDonald's. Yeah, I mean, it's right across the street. Don't show the Alright, well, appreciate you for coming on, hopping on the podcast, Austin. Of course, thank you guys for having me, this is a blast. Now, this next topic is my favorite topic, personally. It is about our breaks that we get throughout the season. We don't have very many of them, but sometimes we do get a week, or even a couple weeks off. And those weeks off are normally about like four different break periods. So, the most recent one we got to experience was spring break, where we actually went down to Florida. We went down to Naples, and we were there for about a week. And then, now that we're in spring ball, the next break we're actually looking forward to is considered our summer break. So, when school gets done, the first, second week in May, we have from then until basically June 1st, and that's considered our summer. Which is like, I mean, almost three weeks, which is really good. Like, that's our longest break of the year, which is really nice. Especially for me, being so far away from home, I really enjoy it. I get to drive home instead of having to worry about flying. I can just spend time back there. And then, obviously, we come back in June, and then since it is still the true summer, we do get a week off for the Fourth of July. Yeah, and that week off, that's kind of our week off before we start really getting into things. Like I said earlier in the podcast, July is really busy for us. And then, obviously, August is when everything just starts going and the season started. So, that week, the Fourth of July weekend is a week, I guess, is really, really good break for us. Kind of that last week, like you said, before we crank everything up. And then, obviously, Christmas break has ranged for us the last two years because our freshman year, we were in the Natty. And so, we were doing winter training and practicing all throughout Christmas break. So, we actually got to go home for Christmas for, what, four days? Yeah, about four days off for Christmas break. But this year, it was a little different because we didn't actually make it to the National Championship. We lost in the semis. So, we actually had, what, a little over two weeks off, which is usually unheard of for our program, at least. But that's nice. Obviously, we'd rather make the National Championship, but the break was definitely really nice. Yeah. So, overall, we kind of get those four breaks that we just kind of explained. So, it's spring break, our summer, which is in May, our Fourth of July break, and then Christmas break, which varies, obviously, year to year. A lot of people wonder, like, as athletes, professional athletes, do we get, like, weekends off? And we do get, well, like, I'd say most of the weekends off. Obviously, during the season, we don't have Saturdays because of games. And during, like, spring ball and fall camp, we don't get weekends off. But a lot of times, most of the year, I'd say we get weekends off, which is nice, too. A lot of people wonder about that. So, during the true, true summer, I would say we actually get our weekends. From all of us at Sports Shorts, this is Keegan Huber and Carson Hagerly, and we would like to thank you for joining us today. We'd also like to thank our special guest, Austin Altapeter, for taking time to share his story with us. Be sure to tune in next time for more sports stories from NDSU Sports Management. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.