No such thing as an off-season

As football season wraps up and fans come out of the woodwork for the basketball season to start, it's easy to lose track of UB's spring sports.

But while the temperatures drop and the snow piles up, the Bulls' spring warriors don't have the luxury of an off-season of rest and relaxation.

"This is their primary time for strength training," said Cheyenne Pietri, strength and conditioning coach for all UB varsity sports. "Once a season starts, it's hard to get a team into the weight room. They're on the road and they have to deal with academics. So this pre-season, the fall season, is our time to emphasize that."

As each team spends six hours a week lifting, the pump-you-up music of Korn and System of a Down blasts over the speakers in the weight room. Focusing on strength, explosiveness and ability to move in space, Pietri and assistant Ryan Groneman tailor personalized workouts for each sport to ensure victory come spring.

"Our role is to give our coaches a better athlete from season to season," Pietri said.

Beyond just weight training, each student dedicates hours to practice with their coaches, developing skills specific to their sport.

"By NCAA rule, we are allowed what is called a non-traditional season," said baseball head coach Bill Breene. "This basically amounts to 24 to 26 full-team practices in the fall. Some programs elect to play actual games during that time. We elect to use these practices to run scrimmages and find out what we have with our new recruits."

In the individual practice phase, players get a chance to work one-on-one with coaches and improve their basic skills.

"In our two hours where we move indoors, we focus specifically on hitting," said softball head coach Marie Curran. "Our pitchers are pitching three days a week for 40-minute sessions. It's very specific. Our three pitchers are throwing all the time, and everybody else is hitting."

Since they are, of course, still students, the athletes are constantly busy with midterms, papers and finals on top of practice time, but love of the game often trumps all the cons to the heavy regimen.

"It keeps our arms loose and in shape, maybe get some swings in," said senior first baseman James Kingsley. "So when we get back, obviously we start right up in January. This way, we haven't totally lost everything and we have something to build off of."

Many players and coaches also see the off-season workouts as a nice reprieve from the regular season.

"We go to 20 hours a week, which is again what the NCAA allows us," Curran said. "We focus on defense three days a week, and three days a week we focus on offense."

"If I'm doing my job we don't have to condition too much, because practice keeps their heart rate up with game-like situations," he said.

But arguably more than the skill workouts, it is the off-season time spent in the weight room that ensures student-athletes can make it through 20 hours of practice a week on top of travel time and upwards of 50 games a season.

"We do a lot of 'pre-hab' rehab work in terms of exercises that are going to keep our athletes from getting injured," Pietri said. "Second, we utilize exercises that will increase their power on the field."

For the players, all the work doesn't necessarily mean the off-season never lives up to its name.

"We try to get together as a team, go out and have fun," Kingsley said. "As a team, a lot of us went to the Rascal Flatts concert together. Nothing too crazy, but just something to have our team get together and enjoy ourselves at the same ti