Most students spend their summer hanging out with friends and traveling throughout the country or even world. Students see it as a break from the school world, where they don’t have to worry about any tests or completing any homework assignments.
But for sophomore Austin Tixier, that isn’t the case.
His summer consists of camps and training for upcoming seasons.
Tixier is involved in a sport each season, football in the fall, wrestling in the winter and track and field in the spring. Each sport is similar yet different, but they all consist of some degree of summer conditioning and training common.
The main sport being football, which Tixier enjoys playing the most.
Over the summer the football players, like Tixier, go through a series of camps leading up to the end of August where it is all-day practicing for two weeks. The camps previous to the all-day practicing before the games in fall are speed and hills camp. At speed camp players “work on speed you need in football, trying to get to your top speed as fast as you can.” Whereas for hills, players will run hills at Melas Park.
Along with the football camps and training, Tixier also participates in wrestling camp.
“It’s two hours a day where you go there and work on things you need to [work on],” Tixier said. “It’s more for working on things you need, [for instance] lifting in the weight room.”
Even with the camps, Tixier feels like he isn’t devoting more time to athletics than spending time with his friends.
“I’d say 90 percent of my friends are in these camps with me,” Tixier said. “You’re doing [these camps and training] for them and you are doing stuff you enjoy.”
Tixier also does some things on his own like “some running, weight-lifting and reviewing film.”
Tixier’s summer isn’t always packed full of sport training and conditioning, him and his famiy try and take vacations over the summer. They will work around his schedule so they can all go on vacation.
“My family definitely knows my schedule,” Tixier said. “They will figure out whens the best time for vacation and when to leave.”
Even though most of Tixier’s summer consists of conditioning for his sports, he is OK with it because he knows that in college he wants to play football and all this training is leading up to it.
“If I could pick any place to go [to college], I’d go to University of Texas,”  Tixier said. “But now, I’m mostly trying to focus on this team and where I’m at right now.”