The Aplington-Parkersburg School District is entering its first full school year of allowing high schoolers to participate in two sports during the same season. They approved the measure before the start of the 2025 spring season, and several students took advantage of the opportunity.
“The majority of the feedback I’ve got has been really positive, just allowing those students to participate in more sports and help different teams try to succeed,” Activities Director Carter Hoff says. “We had a lot last spring doing track and then another sport. It’s something that was new to our school district last year, and just kind of ironing out those kinks and making sure that everything’s running the way needs to be, and trying not to double schedule or making kids pick and choose what to go to. We have some boys doing it here in the fall with football and cross country, not a ton. It’s something that overall, I think has been really positive.”
At the beginning of each season, students select a primary sport, which takes priority over their secondary sport when competitions are scheduled for the same date. Girls tennis moving to the fall season caused some extra scheduling factors to be considered, but Hoff says it’s gone smoothly so far.
“We are somewhat fortunate that we only have one athlete, Megan Bruns, who’s participating in volleyball and tennis. And then we have Aubrey Williamson, who’s doing cross country and tennis. Mr. Berkey before me got scheduling done and really tried to make sure there weren’t very many conflicts with some of our dual sport athletes, but it’s really compact. Like our girls are playing three, four times a week. Some things, feedback wise, we’re getting that are positive, some negative. Unfortunately, we’ve had a couple of rain outs here, last Friday and this Monday, which has made things a little more tricky. But we really tried to get it scheduled in the morning before the school year starts. So it’s definitely been different.”
The tennis season started August 7. The first competitions for football, volleyball and cross country will be next week.
Carter Hoff interview:
