The 10 Worst Things About Preseason

The Preseason is a struggle that every athlete knows. Non-mandatory practice, conditioning and lifting. How bad could it really be? We’ve narrowed it down to the worst of the worst.

10. The Kid That Never Touches The Line

Everyone hates conditioning. Everyone. What do we hate even more? Extra conditioning, due to all those non line touchers out there. There is a special place down under for all of you. Touch the line next time.

9. The Crazy Fundraisers

Yes, D3 sports still require money to play, no, we aren’t funded completely by our school. How do we make up that difference? Coaches try to make fundraising fun, but working security at a racetrack in rural Wisconsin in sub-freezing temperatures was a bad idea from the jump, coach.

8. “Free” Gym Time

Oh, you finally got some free time to yourself? You want to go in the gym and shoot? Feel like getting better today? Sorry, baseball has the gym for 10 hours today, even though their season doesn’t start for another 6 months. Gotta love sharing the gym with five other sports.

7. STUDY TABLES

No, coaches cant schedule practice in the offseason. You know what they can schedule? Library time. The librarians LOVE watching all 20 of us walk in those doors twice a week. AND on the cusp of a new season coach creates a new rule, no food at study table… You can guess how that worked out.

6. Your School Doesn’t Have Football

Gotta love those college gamedays! Oh wait. No basketball, no football, what are we to do here?! No worries, its fine, we like watching other people have tons of fun tailgating on TV anyway.

5. The Strength Coach Who Thinks You Followed The Workout Plan All Summer…

LOL. Gotta love how trusting they are, until they see that first mile time and see what you’re really made of. Those four days of the week are everyones favorite. (Coach if you end up reading this I’m really sorry I still can’t do a pull up)

4. Those Open Gym Players

You know exactly who I’m talking about, and if you don’t, chances are, I’m talking about you. Those players who are NBA All-Stars when it comes to open gym, but when practice rolls around, the chances of them making an open lay-up is like flipping a coin.

3. The Athletic Trainers Won’t Even Look At You Because You’re Out Of Season

“You disgusting winter athlete, you.” Says the AT’s to themselves when they see you in the training room before the season starts. You’ll be lucky to be able to get ice any day before October 15th.

2. Non-Mandatory 6am Workouts

“Should I just roll the dice and see how much coach makes me run later?” You might find yourself asking this question at 5:30 am on a Friday morning. And then you don’t have class again until 1? Good luck falling back to sleep after some post-lift conditioning.

1. You’d Rather Play 2K Than Going To Open Gym

2K sports always picks the worst times to make an amazing video game. The Preseason is dwindling, open gyms are falling victim to ice baths. Heres to all the players out there getting through the rest of this preseason healthy! (Theres always those lucky few)

Practice starts in 10 days for us D3 schools. To those of you already done with preseason, I hate you. How many of these can you relate to? Let us know how your preseason went/is going here at D3 Basketball Struggles!

Every Sport has Problems – soccergrlprobs

Soccergrlprobs is a a blog covering all facets of the issues that every girl who plays soccer will at some point deal with. Although it talks about problems, it is in a very humorous tone throughout the blog. What started out as a basic twitter handle turned into a huge movement among female soccer players around the globe. They’ve been a large influence in female soccer in the past, while also promoting a positive image of women’s soccer, as well as the rest of women’s sports as stated in their mission statement, “It is our mission to support and encourage the well-being and positive self-image of young female athletes everywhere.”

In terms of reader engagement, soccergrlprobs is very active. Since the movement started out on Twitter, they have a strong following on social media, in terms of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. The blog has a separate section for their live Twitter feed, which is updated semi-hourly. They interact with basically any user who mentions them, or uses their main hashtag, #SGP (soccergrlprobs). They also allow their followers to purchase merchandise from their online store.

The design of soccergirlprobs is clean and user friendly. The different sections of the blog are laid out very conveniently and they are easy to find. On the top of the page you can choose what sub-section of the blog you would like to find (YouTube, Store, Mission, Blog, etc.) which makes for a quick click and an easy connection to social media.

What makes this blog so marketable is that they have all of these social media outlets and followers and connections, which creates a lot of site traffic which is a very important aspect of a good blog. Creating a lot of good content that isn’t just “click bait” is very important when it comes to advertisers looking at various blogs.

The following of soccergrlprobs is growing everyday, and with soccer being the most popular sport in the world, the growth of popularity isn’t going to decrease anytime soon. Soccergrlprobs  has made their own lane because of the ability for female soccer players of all ages, as well as athletes everywhere, to be able to relate to this hilarious, informative, and useful content.

This has given you a taste of the direction I hope to push this blog in. From the levels of reader engagement, to creating such a following that reaches people all over the globe who have a relationship in some way with basketball and also Division III sports. Thanks to everyone who even finished reading this post, I’ll be back soon!