Although the semester and sports seasons are winding down, the work is never-ending for the Colonels athletes and coaches.Whether it’s recruiting, working out, holding meetings or prepping for next season, each coach and player on campus has an active summer ahead of them.

Head baseball coach Chip Durham said many of his players will play summer ball, while all will have a workout routine to stay in shape until next season.

“We send them all off with a workout plan,” Durham said. “We hope they get out there and stay working out so that they are ready once the fall semester begins.”

Senior infielder Jose Higuera said he plans to stay in shape this summer, despite ending his collegiate career.

“I’m just going to see what happens and just keep working hard,” Higuera said. “If there is anything after this, then we’ll just have to wait and see.”

As for Durham, most of his summer is spent recruiting new athletes for next year’s Colonels baseball team.

“The recruiting trail never ends for us,” Durham said. “Once we get recruits for this season, we start looking for guys for the next season. It’s a continuous beat and at this level it’s all about recruiting big players to come in and play for you.”

The trend follows in softball as head softball coach Jenny Parsons said her summer is also going to be filled with recruiting.

“The work never ends for me,” Parsons said. “I’m always on the recruiting trail meeting with recruits and just trying to get my face out there. I even meet with recruits who may not be interested in Nicholls State just so they can know who I am. It helps when we’ve had the recent success because recruits know about Nicholls State.”

Just as with softball, recent success of the programs has helped both the tennis and football teams in recruiting.

“I plan on holding camps and recruiting once I take a little break,” head tennis coach Dominic Modise said. “Recruiting should be easier with the season we’ve had, and hopefully I can recruit better players to play for Nicholls State.”

Head football coach Jay Thomas and his staff already have the summer mapped out. Thomas said the summer is active getting things ready for next season and spring recruiting.

Thomas said the off-season training goes through three phases.

“Phase one begins after we finish the season,” Thomas said. “We give our guys a workout that they have to do and get tested by running a mile.”

Phase two of the off-season workouts begins once the spring semester starts and ends with spring practice.

Phase three is what the Colonels are in right now.

“The way the holidays fell, spring practice was a lot earlier,” Thomas said. “We got eight weeks of work in the off-season program and adding that to the five weeks for Christmas break, we had a total of 13 weeks that we’ve been active. We’ll have the rest of May, June and July to finish off phase three which will take us into August for reporting time.”

This season’s plans had to be altered, however, after winning the conference. The Colonels had to make room for the ring ceremony and other events that came along with winning the conference, according to Thomas.

Just like the other sports, the recruiting never ends for Thomas and his staff, which makes downtime with family hard to come by.

“Right now we’re into spring recruiting,” Thomas said. “We have to cover more ground after the storms. That’s why I still go out and recruit. That’s the cards that are dealt to us, and if I have to pull triple duty to get it done then we’re going to do it. The only real downtime with our family is two weeks during the summer when the coaches get a break.