Playing sports at a Division III level requires more than just showing up to games and practices. There are many factors involved such as having a healthy diet and good workout routine. Keeping your body conditioned is key. Whether you play field hockey, volleyball or tennis, it is all the same.
Dustin Malandra, Cabrini’s head strength and conditioning coach, puts together a series of workouts for every sport on campus. The teams of their respective sport come together and meet two to three times a week, depending on the team’s schedule and work out collectively. Malandra works with the athletes even in the off-season to make sure there is no lost progress.
“During the season, it’s more of a maintenance of strength and power, but we also want to continue to build at the same time,” Malandra said. “Off-season it is more related to the goals of the particular sport. For the most part, each sport is fundamentally the same. We need to build lower body strength and power, upper body strength and core.”
Anne-Marie Jones, a junior education major, is an outside hitter for the Cabrini women’s volleyball team.
“I think I have a pretty healthy diet when I’m sticking to it. It’s well balanced but I still treat myself every once in a while,” Jones said. “When I am eating good, I feel good. When I start eating poorly, my self esteem and self image start to go down and it shifts my overall mood.”
“What you eat is your fuel and if you put bad fuel in your car, you’re going to have bad results,” Malandra said when discussing the importance of a good diet.
Switching topics from diet to exercise, not everyone has the same routine. All athletes have the same end goal, but how they achieve it can vary among the teams.
“Off-season I work out a lot. It includes running and on the days I don’t run or bike, I’ll lift. During the season, I don’t usually workout too much, besides the lifting we do with Dustin Malandra,” Ashley Shannon, a sophomore setter/libaro on the volleyball team, said.
Athletes are just like everyone else and have some difficulties with maintaining a strict diet.
“I eat a lot of Chipotle and french fries, but every now and again I force myself to grab an apple or eat a salad,” junior swimmer Kristen Murphy said. “My diet will stay the same until the end of the season when we start to taper, which is when I then try to eat much healthier.”
The lifting program Malandra has designed is a way for the team to get together and bond off of the court, rink or field and also to get a great workout in on top of a two-hour practice.
For the most part, there is a common theme among athletes at Cabrini University. Maintain a healthy diet with the every-so-often cheat day, give all the effort at games and practices, make sure they are doing their required workouts outside the sport and last but not least try to juggle college academics.
“Be patient and stick with the plan,” Malandra said. “If you’re jumping around all the time and not sticking with a set plan, you will not see any results and you may get hurt in the process.”
