While most of the student body is looking forward to the upcoming five-week winter break, many winter athletes' time away from Tufts will be cut short, as teams will return to Medford early to train for the upcoming NESCAC schedule. Athletes on the men's and women's basketball, swimming and track teams will spend the first two weeks of the break at home, only to rejoin their teams for the remainder of the holiday season for practices.
While the basketball and track teams will return to Tufts after their short hiatuses, the swim teams will make their way down south to sunny Florida for their annual training trip.
Men's basketball senior tri-captain Andrew Kaklamanos, who played for a Div. II school his freshman year and only got four or five days of break there, admits that campus can get a little lonely over winter break, but still contends he enjoys the time spent with his teammates.
"Actually, I don't mind coming back early at all," he said. "We get bored sometimes when we're back because no one is on campus, but I couldn't imagine being home for that long."
While in previous years the men's team has traveled to play in various tournaments over break, this year the squad has plans to go to the basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield and practice on its center court. The team stays in the same dorm for the entire three weeks, and with only three or four hours of practice a day, much of the time is spent continuing to bond and develop team chemistry.
"By the end of those couple of weeks the team really gets to be close," Kaklamanos said. "It puts everyone on the same page basketball-wise so everything just falls into place on the court."
Junior Brian Fitzgerald agreed.
"I actually enjoyed it a lot last year because it was my first year on the team so I didn't know a lot of the guys all that well," he said. "It's definitely a great way to get to know everyone a lot better, because there is nothing to do around here but hang out with each other."
Junior Brett Baker of the men's swimming and diving team notes that while it's unfortunate that swimmers only get to spend a week with their families, they have it easier than other teams because they get to travel down south for three weeks rather than having to come back to cold and snowy Medford.
"The swim team is lucky, because we go to Florida for our training trip. It is a great opportunity to get some hard training in since we don't have classes and can focus fully on swimming," Baker said. "It also helps that we get to hang out on the beaches in between practices. I'm sure my opinion of it would be much lower if we had to return to the cold of Boston and be on campus."
Baker is convinced that the hard training and team bonding that take place in Florida will translate to success in the pool when the team returns to Tufts. Last season, just days after its training trip, the Jumbos faced off against local rival MIT. Despite losing to the Engineers two seasons ago, the strong team chemistry developed over the previous three weeks this time around helped Tufts to a convincing 175-116 victory.
"The training trip has a huge effect on our swimming. Everyone comes back recharged and ready to compete," Baker said. "If you look at the results from MIT last year, we came right off of our training trip and the team had a breakthrough performance. We defeated MIT and a lot of people swam [season-best] times."
All six teams saw considerable success in the weeks after their winter training programs last year, and they will look to emulate such achievements when they return for conference play this winter.
