Staff file photos / Neel Madhavan and Michael G. Taylor Top row (left-to-right): Warren JFK’s Michael Condoleon, Fitch’s Kylie Folkwein and McDonald’s Carson Klase and bottom row (left-to-right) Canfield’s Camie Dill and Ursuline’s Jack Ericson all compete during the 2022-2023 high school season.

While many high school students are enjoying their time off during summer, most student-athletes are grinding away, working to perfect their craft and prepare for the upcoming season.

Summer is a time for camps, tournaments, open gyms, lifting, conditioning, scrimmages, travel teams and local community leagues.

Different sports use the summer to prepare for the season in different ways, and teams, players and coaches all have different approaches for what they choose to focus on during the summer months.

Regardless, it remains a crucial period for all sports.

TWO SEASONS

Canfield girls basketball has been busy this summer.

According to head coach Matt Reel, the team starts off with a three-day camp that is broken down into sessions for middle school players and junior varsity/varsity high school players. Then on Wednesday nights in June, they play games in a summer league at Stow-Munroe Falls.

The Cardinals also recently just played a shootout tournament at Barberton, where they played six games in two days, and just returned from Midwest Live at Cedar Point in Sandusky earlier this week. Midwest Live is an invitational college showcase event where Division I coaches can come watch 60-70 of the best teams in Ohio.

“We almost consider it like two seasons,” Reel said. “My goal in the offseason is to play as many quality teams as we can. We really don’t have too many other goals other than to go compete because every year is a brand new team that has different strengths, and we’re trying to figure out what that particular team is going to be good at.”

The Cardinals are coming off one of their best seasons in recent memory. Canfield won its first district title in 10 years and finished the year as regional runner-up in Division II.

The foundation for what Canfield was able to accomplish last year all started during the summer.

“When we played in the summer league (last year), we played some really good teams early and played really well,” Reel said. “I think that opened their eyes to how good they could be and I think that propelled them a little bit extra to kind of go and work a little bit harder than they normally do.

“You always have kids missing with vacations, injuries or other sports, so you have to be careful about making assumptions about it. But when you’re consistently playing good teams and playing well, I think it does give your kids some confidence. For us, it also gives us a really good idea of what we need to work on.”

While other teams and sports may utilize the summer and offseason for lifting and conditioning, the Cardinals prefer to work on skill-specific things, such as shooting and dribbling.

“I’m a believer that basketball players hate running, so I want them in shape during the season, not necessarily in the offseason,” Reel said. “With lifting, we have so many multi-sport athletes that it’s really tough to get a lifting program for 12 months, so we concentrate on skills. We’re pretty fortunate to have a lot of girls that come in and want to shoot, so we have open gyms and we have some shooting goals for them and dribbling goals for them. But that usually wraps up by mid July because that’s when the fall sports really start getting going.”

ADJUSTING TO NEW RULES

Just like the Canfield girls, the Warren JFK boys are using the summer to play as many games as they can during tournaments and camps.

So far, the Eagles have been to tournaments at Malone and Wooster and are scheduled to play a tournament at Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania in July.

According to Kennedy head coach Mark Komlanc, success in the summer translates to success during the season when the time comes.

“I think you can see it in our chemistry, you can see it in their confidence when they’re shooting the ball, even if they’re not making it,” Komlanc said. “The kids that we’ve had that have been committed in the summer, they end up being the best players and that’s not a mistake. That’s where it all starts. When I was first hired, summer was where our success started.”

One of the biggest reasons for all the games is for Kennedy to adjust to the new free throw rules that will be put in place for high school basketball nationwide this upcoming season.

Beginning in the winter, teams will shoot two free throws for common fouls when in the bonus, which eliminates the previous one-and-one free throw situation. New foul limits will be set each quarter for when teams hit the bonus.

In addition to awarding two foul shots for all common fouls, teams will reach the bonus when their opponent commits five fouls in each quarter and team fouls will reset at the end of each quarter. Previously, teams were awarded the one-and-one bonus when their opponents committed seven fouls in a half and two foul shots when 10 fouls were committed each half.

“We’re looking at getting 14 full games in over the summer, which is something that was important for me,” Komlanc said. “A lot of stuff we’ve gone to in the past has been running clock games. I wanted to get our guys the opportunity to play full length games with the new free throw rules in effect. We’ve got some (new) young guys coming on with us, so it’s good for them to get experience with the older guys and understand what their expectations are.”

At a smaller school like Warren JFK, multi-sport athletes are more common. So on a given day, the Eagles will have an open gym shootaround in the morning, before they then go to practices or games for their other sports in the afternoon and evening, such as football or travel baseball.

Like Reel, Komlanc prefers that his players focus on skill-related aspects, like shooting and dribbling, which is why the Eagles host open gyms almost every morning for players to come get shots up.

“We get 5-10 guys consistently showing up and then they go to soccer or they go to football and they’re committed to that stuff,” Komlanc said. “They know the drills that we’ve run through the summer in years past, so they’ll just come in and set up the shooting machine or go through partner shooting and just get a ton of shots up.”

ROUTINE THINGS

While summer is a preparation period for sports in the winter and spring, for fall sports like football, summer is literally the preseason, which makes it all the more important.

During head coach Dan Reardon’s tenure at Ursuline, the Irish have found a routine that works during the summer and have stuck to it.

“We’ve evolved over the years … and there’s been a little bit of trial and error, but I feel like the system we have in place now works pretty well,” Reardon said. “We always plan for a long playoff run and that’s part of it. We have an expectation that we’re going to be playing very late into the season, so you have to manage that. …But we feel like we’re in a really good place.”

Starting in May, Ursuline opened up with OHSAA-allowable camp days. Then spent a portion of June working on fitness, agility and lifting, while some attended college camps for recruiting.

“That’s the way it works nowadays — it’s almost year round,” Reardon said. “There’s a dead period after the season for a month, but aside from that it’s year round for kids not participating in other sports and our kids work very hard in the weight room. …We’ve had a really good summer so far.”

But the big thing that the Irish do every summer is their weeklong college tour that includes stops at schools such as Georgia, West Virginia, Wake Forest, James Madison, Liberty, Appalachian State and East Carolina. A significant portion of the team goes on the big trip and there are smaller college trips to nearby schools scheduled throughout the summer, as well.

“It opens up opportunities for kids to potentially get recruited, that’s part of it, but a huge benefit of it is the camaraderie building for our football team,” Reardon said. “We traveled a lot of miles on the bus, spent seven or eight nights in hotels — we were becoming a football team during that trip as well. There’s a lot of team building that goes on during that trip. So that’s very important leading into the season.”

The Irish will take a break for a week during the July 4th holiday, but then they have a couple weeks of team camp in July, followed by another week off, before they begin official practices at the start of August to prepare for the start of the regular season.

BALANCING ACT

Multi-sport athletes are common at schools across the Valley. Some like McDonald’s Carson Klase even compete in two in the same season.

Klase just finished the spring playing baseball and running track for the Blue Devils.

“It definitely wasn’t easy,” Klase said of balancing the two sports at once. “I guess you just have to find a happy medium between both sports.”

As soon as those seasons ended, he took a little bit of time off before jumping straight into playing in the Youngstown Class B baseball league at Bob Cene Park for the Astro Falcons. This is the first summer that Klase hasn’t played travel baseball since he was 10 years old.

“We have games pretty often — every other day,” Klase said. “I also run pretty much every day. In the summer I try to build up mileage.”

However, a select few athletes are in the unique position of playing three sports. Fitch’s Kylie Folkwein is one of those.

Folkwein plays volleyball in the fall, basketball in the winter and softball in the spring for the Falcons. For the rising sophomore, the summer is basically a continuation of her spring.

After playing a significant role in helping lead Fitch to its first softball state title at the start of June, Folkwein has barely stopped to breathe.

“I don’t think I’ve been home for more than three days in a row this summer yet,” Folkwein said.

Right after high school softball ended, Folkwein jumped straight into the travel softball season. She’s traveled around the country for camps and travel tournaments.

She’s currently on vacation with her family this week, but next week she leaves for Georgia for a tournament with her Lady Dukes travel team.

“I’ve been traveling everywhere and I love it so much because obviously I love softball, but it’s a lot and it takes a lot of time and dedication to continue doing it,” she said.

Softball dominates Folkwein’s summer schedule, but she gets to volleyball and basketball camps and open gyms as often as she can to prepare for those in the fall and winter.

“Whenever I don’t have softball, I’m trying to make myself able to go to volleyball and basketball,” Folkwein said.

But like for all sports, summer is a critical period in helping Folkwein prepare for all three once the school year begins.

“It’s just continuous reps and getting to know your environment and getting close to your teammates,” Folkwein said. “A close team is basically an unbeatable team. If you’re always together, you will catch on to each other’s vibe and just know what to do around each other — you know how the other plays and you can perform better. (Summer) is really important to build good bonds so that your hard work pays off during the season.”

nmadhavan@tribtoday.com