Student athletes taking part in multiple high school sports is common, especially at small schools like Sedona Red Rock. Usually, though, those sports occur in different seasons. A quartet of SRRHS student athletes, though, are pulling double-duty in the fall.
Senior Jaiah Grondin and sophomore Korbin Burke are both starters on the boys soccer team. Grondin also swims for the Scorpions while Burke runs cross country. Two of Burke’s teammates on the cross country team — junior Yaritza Landa and sophomore Jackie Palmer — are also doing multiple sports. In addition to cross country, Landa plays volleyball while Palmer is on the girls soccer team.
Grondin played soccer and swam in his sophomore year. But as a junior, he did no sports in the fall and opted to play basketball in the winter. When the decision was made to move soccer back to the fall for his senior year, he said he knew that he’d return to soccer. But when some of his friends on the swim team tried to convince him to come back to the pool, he figured he’d find out if it was possible.
“It’s senior year,” Grondin said. “I’m trying to go out with a bang, to do as much as I can with the time I’ve got. This year with COVID I was really unsure that anything was going to happen. A bunch of the guys were telling me to go for swim, then they moved soccer to the fall and I was like, ‘I can’t not do soccer.’ I wasn’t sure if it was going to be okay to both. Then I found out that it was okay and everything worked out.”
A general afternoon for Grondin includes swimming practice after school until 4 p.m., soccer practice for the next two hours and offseason basketball after. Although Grondid did acknowledge that the schedule can be tiring, he said he loves it despite.
For Burke, soccer and cross country practice rarely conflict. When cross country practice ends, he heads over to soccer practice. Both cross country coach Ben Scamihorn and soccer coach Sam Blom have been fine with the arrangement.
“Korbin is the hardest working kid I’ve ever worked with,” Scamihorn said. “He does everything I ask him to do if not more.”
“With Korbin, I remember the last time he came to a practice he had just run eight miles,” Blom said. “In an average soccer game you run maybe 4 to 5. So he’s already run a couple of games. He can run all day, really. He never gets tired and I never take him out.”
Palmer has a similar schedule to Burke, with the girls soccer practices beginning after cross country. She wasn’t planning on playing soccer this year but saw that the team was having a problem filling out its roster.
Landa’s schedule has conflicted a little bit more than the soccer players’ in that volleyball and cross country practice happen simultaneously. On the cross country team’s heavy practice days, Landa runs with them. On the lighter days, she either runs on her own or gets her workouts in early and heads over to volleyball practice.
“All of them have been able to manage it really well,” Scamihorn said. “And our practice schedules have actually worked out fairly well. That’s not quite as much of a problem as I thought it was going to be.”
Of course, the coaches being accommodating is only part of the battle. The teachers must also be cooperative. Landa said that she’s kept the lines of communication open and with that, the teachers have been receptive and flexible with her schedule.
“I communicate with my teachers if I’m struggling or not going to be there,” she said. “They’re just okay with it and give me a couple extra days.”
Flexibility is important for sports at SRRHS. Anyone who goes to a game knows that the teams there generally don’t have big benches and even on the better Scorpion teams, there’s not a deep pool of talent to choose from.
That was something that the coaches and players realized immediately and were happy to work with each other to make things happen.
“It means that you have to be flexible as a coach to allow,” Blom said. “I said that right from the get go. I thought it would be a great positive for that to happen. It makes them more well rounded.”
“I think it’s very important to allow these kids to play multiple sports,” Grondin added. “Because some of the best athletes could be in another sport and don’t have time. Last year the reason I didn’t play soccer was because of basketball.”
