Quincey Reese, Editor in Chief

Although students participating in spring sports at Penn-Trafford High School are currently in their competition seasons, athletes from every time of year work to improve their performances with each day.

     To accomplish this, student-athletes seek additional training techniques provided by numerous sources. Whether it is by attending a local gym to increase strength or visiting the school’s athletic trainers when recovering from an injury, all of these factors play into how they yield their best results.

    One of the gyms that several P-T students visit is FSQ Sports Training in Trafford. Created in 2009 as an athletic side-project, the gym became a serious business in 2015 by current owner and Director of Sports Performance Tim Cortazzo and his father.

    Cortazzo explained that the gym works with around 1,000 athletes throughout the year, averaging 90-100 student athletes per month. Both he and Associate Director of Sports Performance Chris Rasky graduated from PTHS as well, so they have a close relationship with the teams and individual athletes at the school.

    Cortazzo said that the gym has worked with the girls’ basketball team for 10 years and the football team for the last five or six years, but they have also done work with the baseball and hockey teams to improve strength, speed and agility.

    He added that the girls’ basketball team goes into the gym itself, though they usually work with the football players during summer conditioning at the school given the large number of athletes in the group.

    Junior basketball and volleyball player Isabella Long, who has been going to FSQ since she was in elementary school, said that she usually goes two days a week, both in and out of season, to work on lifting and conditioning. She said the gym, in addition to her regular team practices, has significantly improved her athleticism.

    “Whenever I was littler, I was trying to get faster because I was kind of slow, not gonna lie,” Long said. “It has really helped with my strength and agility.”

    Senior Niko Rosso has also been attending FSQ for four years in order to help with his football training. He said he typically goes here two or three times a week up until the start of the football season.

    Rosso explained that the workouts involve 30 minutes of speed work before transitioning into lifting and strength exercises. Although the workouts are not specifically tailored to football, he said they are helpful to improving the performance of any athlete.

    Cortazzo added that because they have close contact with several P-T teams, they are aware of the types of workouts the athletes are doing in practice. With this information, they try the best they can to individualize the workouts for every student athlete so that they are training each part of the body evenly. No matter the sport, however, he said that the goals of FSQ remain the same.

    “Our goal is basically to provide a facility and atmosphere that improves students’ performance as far as speed, agility, power, helping them stay injury-free and get stronger,” Cortazzo elaborated. “We want to improve their overall performance for their sport.”

    For athletes who are conditioning and preparing for their sport season, Cortazzo said that FSQ strives to emphasize the importance of performing a quality workout instead of focusing as much on the quantity. He said they like to make sure that their athletes are doing all of the movements correctly at this time so that as they learn the technique, they can begin to add weight or increase the number of sets to further improvement. Overall, the goals of offseason training are to get strong, get fast, learn to move better and reduce injury as much as possible.

    When in season, Cortazzo added that the workouts themselves do not change significantly, but may involve a lower number of reps or slightly modified movements. No matter what stage the athletes are in, however, the goals stay the same. They simply want them to maintain the speed and strength that they have built for themselves in the offseason.

    Rosso said the philosophies of this gym have allowed him to improve consistently each year he has returned.

    ”The reason I keep coming back is because I’ve had better and better seasons. I’ve gotten faster and I’ve gotten heavier consistently,” he said. “As long as I keep getting the results, I am going to keep going.”

    Cortazzo added that another factor they instill in their athletes throughout the additional training is injury reduction. Although they recognize that injury cannot always be avoided, they make sure to teach their athletes movements, warm ups and stretches that prepare and stabilize the body for working out.

    One of their most popular injury reduction practices is an ACL prevention program. Since female athletes are more susceptible to tearing an ACL, they particularly focus this program for girls.

    FSQ also tries to help student athletes suffering from injury. Cortazzo said the trainers there have different advice for recovery than traditional sources may suggest, as they do not condone stopping training entirely. Rather, they instruct their athletes to shift their workouts so that they do not interfere with the injury or recovery. He  explained that this allows athletes to continue to improve instead of losing the fitness they have gained.

   Cortazzo also said that they talk to physical therapists in the area to learn about the type of exercises patients do throughout the recovery process. This way, they can better help their student athletes come back to training and, eventually, competing.

    “Our goal is to find out what they’re doing in therapy, so that once they are cleared to get back into sports, we can kind of be the bridge from therapy back to their sport,” Cortazzo said.

    Although additional conditioning or strength work can benefit an athlete in their sport season, Cortazzo said that overtraining is a possibility that needs to be considered.

    “Overtraining is a big risk. You don’t want to do too much, so you have to find that balance between pushing hard and not overdoing it,” he explained.

    In order to prevent this on their end, the trainers at FSQ supplement the work their student athletes do in practice with exercises that work different parts of the body. Additionally, they condone getting proper nutrition and sleeping enough to support their training.

    Because of the atmosphere and instruction provided by FSQ, Long said that the results of her training are visible in her performances in basketball and volleyball.

    “I love the people that work there, Tim and Chris. It really helps. I have improved my quickness and my strength, and you can see it on the court,” she explained. “I learned that you just really have to push yourself. It’s all about testing the boundaries of what you can do and seeing how hard you can go at it.”

    Despite the variation in training methods, P-T student athletes have had the opportunity to further their skills with additional help.