Benny Polacca and Annie Taylor, AIJI

VERMILLION, S.D. – More than 60 University of South Dakota athletes are sharpening their game skills this summer during a voluntary training session now in its second year.

The University’s Athletics Summer Workout session trains its men’s and women’s basketball, football, swimming and volleyball teams for about nine weeks during summer weekdays. The hour-long trainings are more lax than during regular season trainings, but still require full focus, its participants say.

“The summer is a little bit more social just because of non-mandatory workouts and because we have athletes from different sport teams training together,” said David Frazier, USD’s head strength and conditioning coach who heads the trainings.

Frazier started the trainings last summer after USD recently transitioned to a Division I school. Frazier said 65 of the university’s 350 athletes are participating this summer – a 15-student jump from last year’s participation count.

“Across the nation, most of the universities at the Division I, IAA level are all training throughout the summer,” Frazier said. Since USD is a new Division I school, “it’s going to take a little while for more of our athletes to commit to staying in Vermillion throughout the summer to train and actually improve.”

John Kreklow, a forward on the basketball team and business management junior, describes the trainings as “a pretty full day of work.”