Four days into preseason, and Maine high school teams are settling into a rhythm of routine, getting to know their teammates better and starting to have an idea of what type of team they’ll be this fall. And they’re still running a lot.

Varsity Maine sent reporters to Buckfield girls soccer, Cony boys soccer and Freeport cross country practices on Thursday, and here is what we learned from Cony’s practice:

‘HILL’ OF A RUN

The minigames the Cony boys soccer team played early Thursday afternoon are the parts of practice that everyone enjoys. Little did the Rams know, though, what coach Don Beckwith had in store to end the session.

With 20 minutes left, Beckwith took the players off the Fuller Field turf and directed them to a grassy slope behind the stadium’s north end zone. It was time to run “The Hill.”

“I’m used to doing it at the beginning of practice with our whole morning workout, but we did it at the end, after we did a bunch of scrimmages, so that was really tough,” said senior Carter Fleischer. “It’s really just a mental thing when you do six hills; you’ve just got to push through.”

“The Hill” isn’t particularly large, but the way Cony players have to run it makes up for its lack of size. They jog up and down in almost a wavelike manner, turning at obstacles placed at certain points at the top and bottom of the hill and then heading up or down the other way.

If that sounds tough, just imagine doing that entire process six times. The grunts and heavy breathing become more apparent as the exercise progresses, but the knowledge that they’re building endurance and getting close to the finish line keeps the Rams going.

“You know it’s going to end eventually, so you just push through the pain and know that it’s going to end eventually,” said Judah Bickford, also a senior. “At the end, you get to go back and get some water, and your body is feeling really good.”

EUROPEAN FLAIR

Filip Graham, an exchange student from the Czech Republic, stopped even the toughest shots during Cony’s minigame, and, in only his fourth practice with the Rams, was already showing great chemistry with his new teammates.

The senior is just one piece of a Cony team that’s going to have a European flair to it in 2025. Next week, the Rams will be adding three more exchange students from Spain — welcome additions for a team that, without them, would have faced numbers in the low-to-mid teens.

“In Maine, I’m not going to say it’s not diverse, but it’s not as diverse as other places,” Fleischer said. “That’s something unique about our team. … Here at Cony, we have people from everywhere.”

“I think it’s great,” added senior Max Tibbetts, a first-year soccer player, “we get to learn a little bit about their culture as they learn about ours. They obviously know a lot about soccer and can show us some new things we haven’t learned before.”