The Life of UMD Athletics During Spring Break

Cora Meier (#3), and UMD's Softball Team will be back in Florida for their pre-season games starting spring break. Photo courtesy of Cora Meier

The idea of a “break” is something that most UMD Athletic Teams don’t have the opportunity to experience. Spring break is a time where most leave for tropical vacations and enjoy time for themselves after being handed piles of assignments. Unfortunately, athletes rarely have that luxury.

The UMD Women's Volleyball team gets to experience a trip for spring break where they are free to do what they want. “No training was involved, it was a true vacation for us,” senior right side hitter Samantha Paulson said.

The Volleyball team was able to afford paying out of pocket for their vacation. They planned and executed the trip on their own.  

However, not all teams have the same option available to them. The UMD Women's Softball team spends a week in Florida doing 12 pre-season games. Not only do they travel to Florida, they spend the time before that trying to attain money for their trip.

“We have done volunteering for the Girl’s Icebreakers Hockey Tournament and worked a certain number of shifts per player,” outfielder Cora Meier said. “The organization has donors from businesses around the community that provide a portion of the donations for the time we put in helping.”

Out of the entire week the Softball team spends in Florida they are allowed only one full day to themselves. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) requires that during a season over a seven day period there must be one full day with no required practices, lifts or meetings.

There are a lot of layers to the rules of the NCAA when it comes to traveling, usually their travel days are used as off days because it is not included as a required team activity. However, the team makes sure they are on top of it. “When you’re in the season and feeling the grind of honestly being kinda pounded into the ground on all fronts, you get really good at figuring out if we’re not within regulations,” Meier said.

During the year of 2023, the softball team didn’t go to Florida and instead had four days off from everything, where they were able to be with their families and completely relax.

“Having time where we didn’t have to be together and have a break to be individual people again, I think played a huge role in us being able to win the conference tournament that year,” Meier said.

Meier wouldn’t trade what softball has given her, she just wishes she had more time to be a student, friend and coworker, especially during that time that most other students have that option to do so.

“We all kinda joke that we turn into robots because we don’t have any space or time to be people during the season,” Meier said.

Softball isn’t the only team that deals with the busy life of being an athlete, there are more teams as well that were unable to share their stories, like soccer, lacrosse and baseball.

This spring break while you are traveling somewhere warm, going home to your family or even laying in bed all day, the UMD athletic teams will be sacrificing their spring break for the good of their sport.