For all basketball players in the high school, Monday and Wednesday evenings–at least for an hour and a half–now means shooting hoops instead of doing homework, practicing lay-ups instead of studying. According to an email from Upper School Athletics Director Bobby Starks, there are open gyms Ms and Ws from 6:30-8:00pm through October for all Upper Schoolers interested in playing basketball.

“Everything is an effort to improve the athletics program as a whole and the team specifically,” Starks said. “More and more, our coaches are trying to push the envelope to have the players on day one hit the ground running, versus on day one it’s the first time they’ve picked up a basketball.”

Sophomore basketball player Andy Wessman agrees. “We need an open gym because every other school has one,” Wessman said. “We won’t fall behind this way.”

Both Starks and Wessman believe that the extra time spent with teammates is important. “We’ll do a little bit of everything,” Wessman said. “As much time as you can get with our team as possible is good.”

Though the gyms are open to everyone, there are basketball players who already know they won’t attend.

“Only boys go–it’s not a thing for girls,” sophomore basketball player Jenna Ehrhart said. “It’s available for girls, but no girls go because we don’t even know our coaches are yet, so that means they won’t be there, and we’d be with all the boys and their coaches.”

According to Starks, the IHSA doesn’t allow school teams to have real practice until their season starts, which is October 30 for girls and November 6 for boys.

“We can’t start formal practice until those days, but we can hold informal practices led by captains,” Starks said. “So it’s not a team practice but gives them touches on the ball.”

Ehrhart believes that it should be mandatory for the captains to go. “Everyone would be influenced to go, but our captains aren’t even going,” Ehrhart said. “It’s a good idea if people would actually participate.”

“Sometimes we’ve done that with our captains, where they’ve led practice a month or two prior, so you’ve bonded before,” Starks said. “We’re available in the summer for the fall athletes, and now we want to make sure we give winter sports the opportunity too, so on day one, the team has been playing with each other for a month.”