Schedule-making for Keene State College Athletics is a diligent process that takes place in each sport’s offseason. Creating a practice and game schedule that can adapt to student-athletes’ daily lives, as well as the schedules of opponents, is key for a good sports schedule.
Each season KSC athletics teams have to march through the year following a premade schedule. These schedules vary between each team, as baseball plays around 40 games and basketball is allowed around 30. The Little East Conference assigns teams a set schedule with their conference opponents present, so coaches then have to go forward and fill those games with surrounding division three opponents.
While head coaches have a major hand in the process, Associate Athletic Director Abe Osheyack said help from other areas of athletics is needed to complete the process.
“It’s primarily driven by the coaches, they get a schedule for conference games from the league office and that is usually prepared a year or two in advance. They work around that which varies between sports. For soccer, you play everyone in the league once, once home and once away. For basketball, each conference opponent is played twice,” said Osheyack.
Filling the schedules to completion has a lot of variables other than opposing teams. Each athletic game is required to have referees, ample field/court time, someone to run the scoreboard, broadcasting and if away then a bus and a driver for the team. On top of these requirements, each game scheduled should benefit the student-athletes in their own schedules. Athletic Director Marty Testo said manufacturing a schedule that satisfies student-athletes is vital to Keene State athletics.
“It is important to prioritize scheduling and trying to balance the act of missing the least amount of time out of class, but also not taking the opportunity of games away from student-athletes. There are so many pieces that fall into place, and we do a positive job trying to make sure it all works. You only get so many games over four years and you want to make sure student-athletes play as many as they can,” said Testo.
The student-athletes around Keene State College voiced their opinions on whether or not their schedules benefit them. First-year volleyball player Marina Miller said KSC has done an excellent job adapting the team schedules to the players’ individual schedules.
“I know for me it really helped that after four o’clock you can not have any classes that are starting. That made it a lot easier to get to practice, and during preseason we have a lot of time for eating which keeps us fueled up,” said Miller.
Apart from games scheduled throughout the season, teams are also responsible for creating a practice and lift schedule that student-athletes can work with. Sophomore track athlete Caden Latulippe said the practice schedule plays just as big a role in everyday life as a game schedule does.
“For track we have two different practice times, we have a 7:30 a.m. practice, and for sprinters we have a 3 p.m. practice. So those of us that have class at 8 a.m. obviously go at the later practice. So I would say it is pretty adaptive,” said Latulippe.
Owl nation is located in the heart of New England, which opens up the opportunity for unusual weather to disrupt game scheduling. Just as regular games require certain features, rescheduled games require schools to replace referees and other features. Osheyack said he understands all that goes into rescheduling and how vital it is to play the games already arranged.
“We try to reschedule as many as we can. Our student-athletes are non-scholarship and we owe them the opportunity to give them as many games to compete in as possible. We have moved up games from a three o’clock start to a one o’clock start and that can be tough because our officials aren’t full-time, they all have real jobs,” said Osheyack.
Keene State Athletics goes through this process of scheduling year in and year out and tries to balance having student-athletes in class while also thrusting them into as many games as possible. The process takes time and there are many people and resources used to manufacture an adaptable schedule for student-athletes.
Jacob Enscoe can be contacted at
jenscoe@kscequinox.com
