Juggling act

Playing one physically-demanding sport can take its toll on the body.

Aches and pains are all part of the process.

That’s why most don’t do two during the same season.

Paige Fortkamp doesn’t mind what it does to hers. Or how much sleep she may, or may not, get.

Fortkamp, a Fort Recovery High School senior, is in the midst of helping the Tribe girls basketball team repeat as Midwest Athletic Conference champions on the basketball court all the while pushing to get back to the state finals in swimming.

While she occasionally gets those bumps, bruises ands sore muscles, she doesn’t intend on letting up any time soon.

“I definitely have those days but I have to push through them because I can’t have a day off,” she said. “I have to go, go, go; especially with a demanding academic schedule, too.

“I have to keep going. It’s all a mental game for me. I can’t think that I can’t do it because then I won’t be able to do it. I have to keep my mentality positive, get enough sleep and eat enough and I’ll be just fine.”

See, basketball and swimming are both winter sports, activities Fortkamp, 17, took up at a young age. While she doesn’t remember which she picked up on first, swimming became her first love.

Although she didn’t have a big role on the varsity basketball team as a freshman, she was able to focus on her time in the pool and was among a quartet of girls who became the school’s first swimmers to reach the state finals.

Going into her sophomore year, which she expected to be her most challenging academically, she chose to take the year off from swimming.

“Swim was my No. 1 my freshman year and then I played basketball on the side,” she said. “But I just fell more in love with basketball so that was my No. 1 sophomore year and I completely regret not doing swim.”

Why?

“Because swimming is so fun for me,” said Fortkamp, who will be a collegiate athlete next year, but not in either of her two winter sports — she signed to play volleyball for University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne.

“It is such a competitive (sport),” she continued. “It’s the only individual sport that I do. It’s more on me. It’s more pressure on myself and I love competing individually against other people. It’s so much fun.”

After forgoing her time in the pool as a sophomore to focus on one sport and her academics, Fortkamp went back to being a dual-sport winter athlete as a junior and is doing it again this year as well.

Juggling the schedules for both sports — the swim team doesn’t have a home pool so it practices at South Adams in Berne — and her studies hasn’t been too challenging, either.

“I don’t think it’s too difficult,” she said, noting she has a 3.8 GPA. “Me and both coaches have definitely had a lot of conversations about it. We’ve made it work.”

Some days she has to sacrifice sleep in order to make it work. For example, once or twice a week she’ll get up at 4:30 a.m. to go to morning swim practice at South Adams, return to Fort Recovery for school, and then have a two-hour practice in the afternoon.

Some nights she may get just four or five hours of sleep.

The following days are generally fueled by coffee. And she tries to make up for lost sleep on the weekends.

“I don’t go to bed the earliest,” she said, noting she attempts to go to bed before midnight if she has morning swim practice the next day. “Other than that it’s not too bad. I get enough sleep. It’s not terrible.”

Holly Gann, her basketball coach, said Fortkamp’s ability to juggle her athletic commitments with her schooling is equivalent to that of an adult.

“Paige does a great job being able to do that balance,” she said. “For adults, that’s a work-life balance. For kids, for her, it’s a two-sport balance. It’s time management. She prioritizes. She’s very responsible.”

Fortkamp admits she likes to procrastinate and doesn’t necessarily use her time wisely during study hall sessions. But she tries to find time at school when she doesn’t have any anything to do with sports or when she has free time at home to complete any necessary homework.

She feels being able to handle two sports on top of school will help her when she gets to Saint Francis and the demands as a collegiate student-athlete become greater.

“Absolutely because I’ll have games on days that I’ll have classes and I’ll miss a class,” she said. “I’ll have to go and make time to get a tutor in to get my homework done to be able to make up the classwork.”

Although she spends her spring time working at Miracle Lanes and Cooper Farms, Fortkamp doesn’t feel as if she’s sacrificing any aspect of having a high school social life.

“I try to hang out with my friends as much as I can,” she said. “I don’t think I miss out on too much.”