Simmons athletes make the best of being apart with #TrainLikeAShark

Beginning the week of September 16, Simmons University Athletics introduced a ten-week challenge for students, in teams of four people each, to enter and receive prizes by completing the workouts that the varsity sports teams curated. 

As a part of the Office of Student Leadership or Activities’ (OSLA) engagement calendar, all sports teams created exercises that are specific to their sport. 

Erica Schuling, the associate director of athletics and head soccer coach, said that there was a lot of brainstorming and collaboration across the university to see if they could increase the level of engagement of students outside of academics. To Schuling, the idea of Train Like a Shark was a no brainer.

“We wanted to showcase what our teams are doing and ended up deciding to create this program where each team could take ownership one week and share how they are training and staying fit while we are all remote and across the country. Our main goal was to try to find a way to reach people that may not be feeling connected, especially first years that haven’t been able to experience a team-like situation,” stated Schuling.

Beginning the ten week challenge with the lacrosse team, a demo video was uploaded to the @simmonssharks Instagram for their sport-related workout. There are approximately 80 people entered, athletes and non-athletes included, making a total of 20 teams participating in the challenge. 

Following lacrosse in week two was the field hockey team. Haley Dover, a junior on the field hockey team studying nursing and psychology, said that she likes the inclusion of non-athletes because it’s a great way to get the entire community involved.

“If other people in my group weren’t on my sports team, I would probably feel a lot closer to the community because we all check in on each and make sure that we’re doing it and when we’re going to post,” said Dover.

Week three students were able to, “Train like a shark – softball style,” head coach of the softball team, Brook Capello, stated in their demo workout video. 

In order to win a weekly prize and ultimately the grand prize, everyone on a team must post a short video or still shot of them doing the activity on their Instagram story with tagging @simmonssharks with the hashtag ‘trainlikeashark.’

With the email from Russell Pinizzotto, Interim Provost and Lead Academic Task Force Subcommittee, on October 19 saying that all classes for the upcoming spring semester will be offered online, Simmons athletics might be seeing a lot more of these interactive challenges in the upcoming future.