While most students are at home doing homework, or out socializing with friends, sophomore Xavier Collette, spends his time on the road to Northbrook, journeying to lacrosse practice.

The 23-mile trek east is full of unpredictable rush hour traffic; the normally 45-minute drive morphs into a 60 plus minute drive. All that time spent in the car, and that doesn’t even include practice and the drive back. For Collette, this is extremely frustrating.

“It probably takes around four hours, because it can be 45 minutes [to] an hour there and it’s a two-hour practice, so it’s a pretty long practice, and then my parents usually want me to drive back to get the driving time for driver’s education. But, yeah, it takes up a lot of time. It [practice] used to be on Tuesdays and Thursdays, [now it’s on Thursdays and Saturdays] so that’s a benefit, but it still takes a lot of time,” Collette said.

Playing a sport at this age, and at the level most high schoolers play at, can be more time consuming than doing homework. Student-athletes devote hours upon hours of their time to perfecting their craft.

And in some cases, like Collette, sacrifice precious time after school to drive to a faraway town in the name of their sport. Adding to this is the fact that Collette plays for multiple teams throughout the year.

“I play for a number of teams. I play for Rotten Apples; they are my newest team that’s out of Northbrook. I play for them in the fall. [I’ll] probably play for them a little bit over the summer too, next year. But, in the spring and also over the summer, I play for Barrington. So, sometimes [practices] will cross over a little bit,” Collette said.

With the winter season here, it’s easy to feel the effects of the changing weather, especially on the road. The roads become slick with ice and snow, and traffic becomes heavy as some cars struggle to grip the road. Collette feels these effects of winter weather not only on the road but also on the field.

“What would happen is, my coach had outdoor practices up until like 2 weeks ago. So, the practices would constantly get canceled. Because the fields would just be too frozen or rained out or just too snowy. But if they aren’t canceled, the travel conditions could be pretty bad and it can get pretty dangerous,” Collette said.

Athletes sacrifice everything for their sport, and for Collette, winter weather has the ability to make his sacrifices feel like they were in vain and a waste of time. If everything goes as planned, Collette finally returns home on Thursdays by 9:00 PM with little time to do homework and settle down.

“I don’t think I get as much sleep as I should. I mean that’s also my fault cause I don’t get to bed as [early as] I should. Like when I go to lacrosse and come back I’m still hyped up so I really don’t get to fall asleep,” Collette said.

As devoted to their sports athletes are, there are times when the sacrifices made force athletes get creative to get everything in their lives done.