The coaches of my high school’s football team had a policy :
“No hitting for ten practices”.
Since two a days were around 10 days long, most kids would be eligible at or nearly after the first week.
As a very losing program desperate for bodies, it was quite lax.
You could skip some practices without excuse really, you didn’t even have to join before/during two a days, they had a cut off date around 3 weeks into the school year.
After I had quit as a freshman, this one lineman, a stork if ever there was one, who benched 365 that year at around 240 with twig legs, had persuaded me to join before that cutoff.
“I know you plan to wrestle, this’ll prepare you for that. What was it you were playing last year?”
“Right end”
“You’ll end up starting d end on one side or the other once you’ve shown to practice for ten days.”
The defensive coordinator saw me walking in to join that afternoon wearing a marine corps pt shirt from the surplus store. He got all hyped, I believe he was a prior service cop that I met in the gym years later, and had me practicing before the 10 days.
The first game, not yet eligible to play I was paired with the starter at right end for hitting drills during warmups and the coach walked by saying “damn insert eastern european last name, damn (looks at clipboards to put name to number) insert my last name, you’re not warming up, you’re going for real, he must want that spot, I think I see both my starting ends in 2 weeks”.
A kid moved from the next town over and joined, but remember the 10 day eligibility, and on him they were enforcing it.
He was pissed, kept saying how he was already hitting at the other school, that it’s not his fault his parent had to move.
Half way through that first practice he stormed out, actually breaking into the locker room to get his shit (allegedly not too hard to do, I’d heard with enough force push/pull they’d pop), and biked off.
I was getting into practice before they’d enforced the whole ten days, but still there was a lot of standing around.
This thought hit me :
You could make that inactivity still active.
“Fuck this, I’m going to go sprint.”
What’s the coach gonna do? Up/down you?
You could be there on the sidelines and start doing so on your own accord.
“Fuck standing around, I’m gonna condition.”
You could (at least attempt to) get someone in the sideline to drill with you, again all the coach has is gassers and up/downs. And that’s still you getting your way.
You could be ballsy and just walk into formation taking the spot you want.
Again gasser? Up/down? Actually playing? Results in fist fight which = no hazing?
There’s no lose.
If any coach wanted to kick you off the team for this stuff he would’ve been overridden by the psycho redhead former army ranger (that’s what the whispers said about him) and the ≤125lb 80+yo man who threw skittles at lollygagging fat body linemen, calling em “fat man snacks”, the practice of which he picked up from something he had witnessed in boot camp in a time pre vietnam era as he was old enough for korea if not barely ww2.
There’s always something you can be doing when you “have to” stand around.
And you can always go harder.
You want the struggle, hardship hardens.
Persistence & Tenacity