It is currently the end of January of the year 2022. In approximately 2 months, it will be 2 years since the spread of COVID-19 changed everyone's lives.
Last year, students who played sports, including myself, questioned whether sports would be possible due to the pandemic. Whether we would have spectators, have games, have meets, or even the ability to practice after school.
With these questions that everyone had in mind, we still had to isolate ourselves in our homes for school. Without meeting our teachers or classmates in person.
Luckily, the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) declared that we were allowed to carry on with sports.
However, many rules were set in stone for the variety of sports that we have here at Harding in order to protect others and slow the spread of COVID-19. Multiple teams were only allowed to have a certain number of family members to spectate their games/meets, while others were not allowed to have any spectators at all.
One of those teams which I am a part of, was not permitted to have spectators, which is the swim team. I have been on Harding’s swim team for my entire high school career. COVID-19 hit at the end of my sophomore year, which means my junior year was going to be completely different from my first two years of being a part of the high school swim team. The season consisted of 2 new coaches, as one of them has never coached swimming before. It felt like practice was canceled once every week, meets were boring, some meets were canceled, and having to test for COVID-19 every other week.
Unfortunately, I was positive for COVID-19 in the middle of my junior season and I had to miss out on 2 weeks of practice, along with 2-3 meets. The only symptoms I’ve had were body aches, a runny-nose, and fatigue.
However, once I returned back to the pool, I felt like I could hold my breath for as long and I would get tired much faster. The thing with swimming, you train for hours upon hours to maybe only get a few milliseconds faster than your personal record. When I missed those 2 weeks, it felt like my whole season was ruined, and I’m positively sure other teammates have felt the same way, along with all other student-athletes who have tested positive for COVID-19 in the middle of their season.
I had made a survey for the students at Harding who would like to share their experiences, and the responses were very similar to my experience. For example, one student responded to a question that asked how COVID-19 affected their season and physical fitness. They explained that the virus had caused their fitness levels to go down, they gained at least 30-40 pounds, had pains in their sides and legs, and they are always out of breath; stating they can’t do the things they used to love doing. Another student mentioned that their team was “way less motivated than before COVID…physically everyone is fine, but nobody is the same…[their] team feels drained…just not as fun as it used to be.”
Overall, the point of this article is to express the feelings and experiences with fellow student-athletes at Harding, and to show how important it is to be safe and conscious you have to be with this virus around others. Wearing a mask, keeping a distance from others, and staying home when feeling sick is vital to kids who want to get back to “normal” with their sport’s season.
It is also vital to their health.
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