In one weekend, she competed in two State Championships in two different cities, returning home with three medals. Playing two sports at once worked for St. Joseph’s Academy former senior Krista Menghini, who participated in varsity volleyball and cross country last fall. And now it will work for freshman Gretchen Schloegel, who will participate in both JV dance team and cross country, this spring.

“I kind of wanted to have a mix,” Schloegel said.

Gretchen and her father, Robert Schloegel, discussed the decision earlier this summer with STA athletic director Mark Hough.

“Gretchen had been planning to run cross country once she decided to go to STA,” Robert wrote in an email. “Then she read that STA was starting a JV Dance team (and she loves to dance) this year so she decided to tryout. It turns out her dance coach is a runner and is very supportive of Gretchen dancing and running.”

According to Hough, the school’s informal policy regarding athletes wanting to play two sports at once, has not changed.

“We evaluate each situation on a case-by-case basis considering the demands put on by the individual involved and the unique characteristics of each sport,” Hough wrote in an email for an earlier Dart article (Freshman chooses between track and soccer). “Generally speaking, it will be very difficult to manage two sports in the same season and equally as difficult for two sports schedules to work in sync with each other.”

However, Gretchen’s schedules do not appear to clash, with the exception of two conflicting practices. When evaluating Gretchen’s case, Hough first looked at the game-day schedules of each sport. The two schedules happened to work in sync, as cross country meets are, for the most part, on Saturdays, a day when dance team does not meet. The second part of the evaluation involved looking at the practices schedules.

“Cross-country is mostly after school and dance is usually in the evenings,” Hough said.

“So if she could pull all of that off with all of her other commitments as far as time is concerned, then it seems to work out.”

Gretchen believes that the two sports compliment each other in more ways than just scheduling.

“I think cross-country makes you stronger and that will help with dance team,” Gretchen said.

In addition to STA cross country and dance team, Gretchen will continue to dance with The Pulse Performing arts on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a club dance team that she has been with since she was 8 years old. Because STA dance team practice is only twice a week, Robert believes she will be able to handle the schedule.

“She has done other sports in the past along with her dance in grade school,” Robert said.

“She has had busy schedules in the past so she should handle it well and she knows that the priority is school.”

However, it does not work out for every athlete. Last spring, sophomore Mary Gibson was told she had to choose between JV soccer and varsity track.

“She knew it was too much of a load,” Hough said. “There were ways we could have gotten it to work. Track is mostly on Saturday and I think there is only one Saturday JV soccer tournament. So those were going to work, but the time aspect of school and practices just- It’s tough to do. It’s tough to do two sports in the same season.”
According to Hough, another incoming freshman is looking to play both volleyball and softball. Hough said that he and the athlete will be looking into that possibility sometime this week.

“We want to encourage it if it works,” Hough said.