Lucas: An Uphill Battle

By Adam Lucas

Carolina's 2018-19 basketball season unofficially began on Thursday afternoon with the first day of preseason conditioning.

The Tar Heels gathered on a hill in Meadowmont for a series of uphill training sessions that began with slides and then finished with twelve 60-meter sprints.

On the page, it doesn't sound so bad. In the sweltering Chapel Hill sun, under the watchful eye of Jonas Sahratian and assistant strength and conditioning coach James Ayscue, it's a little less enjoyable.

The players mostly began in good humor, kidding Cameron Johnson—who was a full participant—about his recovery from offseason hip surgery. Each of the six diagonal slides was followed by a 30-meter uphill sprint. Even after the second and third set, there was still some joking.

Then, though, the reality started to set in and the focus sharpened. That's where the leadership from Carolina's three upperclassman leaders really showed off, as Johnson, Luke Maye and Kenny Williams were continually near the front of virtually every repetition, and were usually the first ones to encourage their teammates.

Players are fond of saying that Sahratian gets more out of them than they believe they are capable of doing. It's easy to see why in the conditioning setting, as he mixed encouragement with cajoling on every trip up the hill.

"I need more out of you!" he admonished a sophomore who was starting to relax a little during the slides. "Let me see your numbers!" he told another Tar Heel whose form had fallen apart as he became more tired, reminding him to square his shoulders to the bottom of the hill.

When the six slide-sprint combinations were finished, the session was just half over. "We're halfway there," Maye told his teammates. "That's good work," Johnson said.

An even tougher challenge awaited in the back half of the workout. Each player had to complete twelve 60-meter uphill sprints in a prescribed amount of time (perimeter players had to make it up the hill in ten seconds, post players 11 seconds) with a minute of rest between each sprint.

That's a nearly 200-foot sprint, double the length of a basketball court, so it doesn't translate perfectly to the sport. But that's not the goal. The intention is to work on power endurance—the ability to do explosive work both laterally and linearly over and over. And why a dozen sprints? Because the coaches want to see how the players maintain the quality of their effort as fatigue creeps into their running.

Players also learn there's almost always more energy left in the tank than they might expect. When the coaches announce, "The winner of sprint 11 can skip the twelfth one," suddenly the intensity and execution are much greater than they were for the tenth sprint. Coby White wins the perimeter group's 11^thsprint and Nassir Little takes the 11th dash for the big men (perennial conditioning star Luke Maye had already earned the opportunity to drop out after the ninth rep, but voluntarily did one more; Leaky Black had also earned the right to drop out after nine).

As the team finished cooldown stretching, Roy Williams praised the leadership and production of Johnson, Williams and Maye, and also mentioned the consistent effort of Andrew Platek. Preseason conditioning continues roughly twice per week leading up to the first practice of the season on September 26.

University of North Carolina Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Cameron Johnson

Nassir Little

Luke Maye

Andrew Platek

Coby White

Kenny Williams

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