days count: 208
I know the last update was just yesterday, but I figured that I have a lot of time right now, so I'll just make a post about the sports at my high school.
So basically, the school year starts off in fall or more like August, but we call it fall sports. Every high school is different, but in Kern County we have Volleyball for girls, Tennis for girls, Cross Country for girls and boys and obviously American Football during fall, which is until mid of November. There's also cheerleading but that's only during Football and Basketball season and it doesn't really count as a sport.
During winter, my high school offers Basketball and Soccer (=European Football) for boys and girls, and for the boys there's Wrestling.
This week the spring season is starting off, my school offers Base-/Softball, Track and Field and Swimming for boys and girls and it is Tennis season for boys.
To get into a team, you have to go through 'Try-outs', which is especially for team sports, I didn't have try-outs for XC or track. Depending on what grade you're in, you get into a Frosh/Soph (Freshmen & Sophomore), Junior Varsity (=JV, Junior) or a Varsity (Senior) team. If you're a Freshmen or Sophomore (that's 9th and 10th grade), you get into a Frosh/Soph team or above (which means if you're really good in the sport you're trying out for, they'll put you into JV or Varsity). Most people that are Freshmen or Sophomores get to do the sport they're trying out for. If you're in 11th grade (which means you're a junior) you have to make the JV team, you cannot get into a level that's meant for underclassmen, so you have to do good at the try-outs, otherwise you won't be able to practice that sport or compete other high schools. The seniors have to make the Varsity team in the sport they're trying out for, which is really hard. Everyone can make the Varsity team, if a Freshmen is really good at American Football, he gets into the Varsity team, so there's less spots left for upper classmen. In a Frosh/Soph team they're always looking for more people to try out, so basically everyone gets in.
In every sport, the high school offers 'meets' or 'games', so you compete other high schools. For example: You're playing JV Basketball, so you get checked out of school earlier on a wednesday because the school bus that takes the whole team (Frosh/Soph, JV and Varsity) to another high school in a different city (which is mostly Bakersfield for us) and that takes about an hour. So most of the time you either leave 6th period or you don't even go to 6th period and go to the bus during lunch time. If you are late, the team waits for you & people get mad (especially the driver and the coach, yep happened to me.) As soon you get to the school where the game is, the Frosh/Soph team plays the Frosh/Soph team of the school. The JV & Varsity team watches and cheers.
In Cross country and track its different because its not a team sport, so there's a bunch of schools on one spot and you just run against like 30-200 other people. And it is really hard to watch XC because the athletes run between 2 and 3 miles on a course, not on a field. Track is the same, but you run laps around a football field, so you can watch it.
At the meets or games or whatever, they sell shirts and stuff. After the last team or athlete competed at the event, they sometimes hand out medals or trophies. Then everyone gets back into the bus (that's often late at night) and the whole team goes to a fast food restaurant (for example In n' out burgers, Panda Express, Jack in the box,..) or some people go to Walmart and get fruits and stuff to eat in the bus. You're actually not supposed to eat or drink in the bus though. The bus seats are not comfortable, Freshmen and Sophomore have to share their seats if there's not enough free spots (which sucks because then you can't even sleep).
To be honest, I think sports in general are way harder here than in Switzerland (or I just practiced the wrong sport there, who knows). You practice every single day during the week except the gamedays and on the weekends you have meets too. So the only day you get off is either saturday or sunday.
You cannot skip practice just because you don't feel like going or you're having a cold. Practices are really hard. You get to your limit every single day. Team spirit is also really important, people push each other, even if they're from another school.
On game days, you wear your jersey's/cheer uniform/whatever or at least your school colors.
The meets in Bakersfield are always hard, because it is about 32 degrees when we're running and you basically die.
At the end of a season, there's a banquet. They'll hand out trophies f.e. biggest progress etc, everyone brings something to eat and they put everything on a table and you just eat together and the coaches say something about every single athlete. You get a diploma and all that stuff.
You do not have to play any sports at the school. There's benefits if you do, but if you don't feel like you don't need to. The benefits are mostly like that you get a bigger locker to put your stuff in, you miss school sometimes and you don't need to make stuff up, you meet a lot of people and make good friends. (The closest friends I have are the ones I met in cross country) and you obviously are fitter and you feel better. Especially if you're an exchange students the last two points are really important, because you're new at the school and its nice to have people to hang out with and you'll also gain some weight.
If you decide to not do any sports after school, you can put a P.E. (=Physical Education) class into your schedule. That's like a sports class in Switzerland, but its a serious work out and you practice every day. My P.E. class is aerobics and sometimes it is really hard, because we work with weights and stuff.
I just realized that I've been typing this little text since about an hour, lol.
Today was the last day of pre-season (which is like conditioning, so they just make the practices really hard so you'll be in shape) of track and it was the first practice I went to, the other ones got cancelled because of the weather. Track and Field is 'Leichtathletik', so you do sprints, jumps, you throw stuff or you run long distances.
Today we did two warm up labs, that's 800 meters. Than we stretched, then we ran another 800 meters. Than we did jumping jacks and all that stuff for like 20 minutes, it was pretty rough and I thought it was the actual work out. Then we started the real practice. We ran 2 times a 100 meter sprint, then we ran 2 times a 400 meter sprint, then two 200 meter sprints, then 2 more 400 meter sprints and then again 2 x 200m and 2 x 100 meters. Between every sprint we had a break of 2 minutes. After the sprints we stretched again. For me, the practice was pretty hard, some of us felt sick and blacked out, one girl threw up. I'm really excited for the season though, because the meets are fun.