If you were a Stanford athlete, which season would you want your sport in — fall, winter or spring? Would you want to get to campus while it is barren and lifeless and open the Stanford sporting season? Would you want to cut your winter break a little short to prep for the winter season, competing during a lull in the Stanford atmosphere? Or do you want a spring sport, closing out the Stanford sports season as the campus is abuzz with the energetic aura of spring quarter? Let’s take a look at the upsides and downsides to each sporting season.

An advantage of fall sports is that they are the first to begin a new school year. New freshmen, an exciting time on campus and great weather all factor into more enthusiastic and spirited Stanford fans. In addition, several of Stanford’s most successful teams play in the fall, including women’s soccer, women’s volleyball and men’s water polo. These sports also bank off of football, which is the fall sport across the nation. Success in football translates to even more excitement over other fall sports. Not to mention, the weather is particularly nice up here from August to November, so it’s a nice time to play and watch sports.

Perhaps the biggest downside for fall sports is that all of them have to report early for practice. That means their summers get cut short and by the first or second week of August they return to Stanford to start training, usually living in some dorm. For some athletes it’s a fun time, but for others, it is a bit too much. But since some teams start playing at the end of August — nearly a full month before any other students get to Stanford — they have to start early.

But starting early means you end early and fall sports do just that. By December, the sports are over and the fall athletes get the rest of the year off. While this does not mean that they stop practicing and training, they have no competitions and are mandated by the NCAA to practice less. For some, this is a welcomed time off to rest. For others, it is a time to catch up on school work and take harder loads and harder classes. For the rest, their weekends begin on Thursday.

There definitely aren’t as many big name sports in winter as there are in fall and spring, with the exception of basketball. While basketball is the heavy hitter of the winter sports, sports like men’s volleyball, gymnastics, swimming and wrestling are fun spectator sports.

An upside that winter quarter sports have is that there are fewer things going on around campus. This means that: 1. athletes get less distracted with social and University-wide events and 2. the general student body may have more time to come to sporting events.

Some downsides include, for certain sports, cutting Winter Break short to return early and train for competition. Another is the weather, which often is not favorable to practicing and playing outdoors. While almost all winter sports are played indoors, lots of practices still take place outside and sports that need to practice for the upcoming spring season are affected as well.

While some would argue that sports are just better in the fall, winter sports have the hardware to prove that they are just as good if not better. For example, this winter we will be following our women’s basketball team as it goes for a third straight Final Four appearance, as well as our world-record holding swimmers and the No. 1 men’s gymnastics team.

The sweet smell of spring brings the final stretch of Stanford sports, some of which are baseball, softball, women’s lacrosse, tennis, women’s water polo and track and field. All these outdoor sports are played under the warm weather and most go well into late May and June. Track extends to the day before graduation and baseball postseason goes far beyond graduation. Spring sport athletes that have been waiting all year to play finally get the chance come March and April — this time for real.

Obvious upsides to spring quarter sports include finishing out the Stanford sports season, the nice weather that rarely affects practices and competition and the general atmosphere around the Stanford community in spring. Look around to find students sunbathing on the lawn at Sunken Diamond or jumping between a track meet, a water polo game and tennis match all going on at the same time, all within 100 yards of each other.

Downsides include having to wait all year to finally step on the field and a lot of social distractions. It often is hard to practice and train intensely in October when you know you won’t be stepping on the field until March or April. Spring quarter is also the most social and fun quarter at Stanford. It is tough for some athletes to go to bed because of practice or a game while there are people yelling and music blasting downstairs or even right outside their door. While for many athletes it’s a no-brainer tradeoff, for others it’s actually kind of tough to get adequate rest.

I cannot fail to mention sports that run through both or all seasons, muddling the seasonal divisions and making for a long and tenuous year. The ones that jump out to me are swimming, tennis, baseball and softball and cross country/track and field. These sports have competitions that span two quarters and keep the athletes in competition mode for several months in a row. In fact, all cross country athletes at Stanford run fall, winter AND spring seasons: cross country in the fall, indoor track in the winter and outdoor track in the spring. One season of competition is enough, let alone three in a row with little break in between. The athletes of these sports have to stay healthy and motivated over a longer period of time than some others.

So what kind of athlete are you? Are you a first-out-of-the-gate, early riser athlete that gets all the hard work out of the way, so the rest of the year is yours to have? Or are you one of those people that never liked to present their project first, but definitely would go second? Or maybe you are a spring-sporter, waiting all school year, closing out the sports season on the Farm under the sunshine and playing off the energy from a fun and active campus. Perhaps you want to take it all on and join the Stanford distance runners and compete all three quarters. Perhaps you don’t want to be an athlete and would rather every weekend start on Thursday.

Danny Belch’s weekends never end. Find out how he spends them at dbelch1 “at” stanford.edu.