Joe and A.J. Guidi are both one-sport athletes.
Joe, a recent Pinkerton graduate, plays baseball, and his little sister A.J., who will be a junior next year, only plays basketball. But when the high school sports seasons are over, the Guidi family doesn't stop for a second.
When he's not on the diamond, Joe is in the gym or at the batting cages in Derry, Salem or Litchfield. A.J. is in the gym almost all the time. But once summer rolls around, things get a little hectic around the Guidi household.
"I think we're only home a total of three days in July," said A.J., whose AAU summer basketball team does nothing but take trips all over the country. "We're travelling the whole month. We're going to Pennsylvania in two weeks, then we go to Chicago, Baltimore for Junior Nationals, and we just came back from Manhattan last week. It's all for AAU. You have to be so dedicated. You have to be willing to give up pretty much your whole social life from the end of school until the end of summer."
She said that she and her family will drive everywhere but Chicago.
"It takes a lot of dedication," added Joe, who once went as far as St. Louis to play AAU baseball. "It takes a lot from the person themselves, but also the family travelling and stuff like that. It's a lot of money."
Things have calmed down a bit for Joe, whose Legion team plays mostly in-state and mostly at night, but he still figures he puts anywhere from 25 to 30 hours a week into baseball during the summer. He said he can still hang out with friends or go to the beach in the mornings and afternoons. That's almost like being a normal teenager. Scrambling for rides to Manchester or further, though, can sometimes become a bit of a problem.
"It's pretty crazy actually," he said. "You have to find rides because you all have to drive to the games separately instead of taking a bus, and the parents all want to be there if it's a close game and stuff like that, so they have to be able to find the time and money to do it."
Not so for A.J., who has sacrificed literally her whole summer for the sake of her game. Every morning this week, she was up at 7 a.m. to work Pinkerton's basketball camps and referee its many games. She didn't get out until around 4 p.m., at which point she would head right to a 21/2-hour AAU practice before finally playing her one game of the day at 7 p.m.
"I'm pretty much around basketball a good percentage of the day," she said. "Even when I'm not doing basketball, I usually go down to CompleteAthlete, which is a weight training program at the SportsZone that works on speed, quickness, strength and jumping. I'm there Mondays and Fridays when I don't have practice. On Wednesdays, I have Pinkerton basketball at night. I pretty much don't have a day to myself, and that's all summer."
It takes a financial toll as well. A.J. spends a lot of time fundraising as well, and she says the money she receives goes a long way toward making these trips possible. She's not the only one that sacrifices her time to commit to basketball, either. Because she's only a high school sophomore, her parents are always along for the ride.
"My parents love watching me play, so they'll do anything it takes, and it's the same with my brother," she said. "My mom takes a lot of time off from work but she still works constantly in the hotel room. She brings her laptop with her but she's willing to do that. I love having them there. My mom and I watch TV and movies in the car a lot, and my family and I are very close, so we just talk and have fun. We're really not in hotel rooms a lot though. We play basketball early in the mornings, get something to eat, go back to the gym, come home and then it's already time for curfew."
A.J. has a few more years of this kind of hard work and travel, but for Joe, it all paid off. He'll play at Colby Sawyer next year as a freshman. Those long bus rides and doubleheaders won't seem that bad, though.
"I'm used to it by now," he laughed.
