Athletes Adapt to Preserve Season

Regardless of the field, court, or course, all athletes focus on improving their athletic abilities, endurance, and performance each season, and this year has added additional challenges to athlete’s plates due to modifications to allow sports to continue.

All sports have been affected by COVID, and have implemented changes to deal with it. These range from masks and face shields, to sanitizing equipment, limiting audience size and social distancing.

Despite the challenges faced to preserve sports, Athletic Director Scott Helms thinks having sports seasons is important for students-athletes' mental and physical health.

“Allowing our programs to run at the beginning of the school years gives our students athletes somewhat a sense of normalcy, which in turn impacts their academic and mental state,” Helms said.

Despite wanting programs to happen, the athletic department faces many challenges including everyday changes, especially at the beginning of the season.

“[It is hard], trying to prepare for all of the unknowns,” Helms said. “It is such a fluid situation that changes were being made and a daily basis at the beginning of the athletic season.”

On top of changes to rules and schedules, the use of athletic facilities and additional athletic activities has also changed. “There have been many changes. Use of locker room and weightroom, team dinners, travel,” Helms said.

However, through perseverance all sports haven’t let the changes impact their performance. “The only time it has had an impact on performance is when we have had athletes out on quarantine,” Helms said.

For head football coach John Redders, this year is very challenging for his team, but he is thankful they have a season. The biggest challenge is “Trying to create new habits for ourselves and well-being,” Redders said. The “strictness of contact tracing” is a new change which is necessary due several players being quarantined.

Many additional precautions have been added to protect coaching staff and athletes in all sports. For football, it means wearing a plastic shield that goes inside of their facemasks and sanitizing equipment

The volleyball team has similar changes in rules. For varsity volleyball player Olivia Otto, “just having everyone there mentally, and just fighting the diversity of the challenges,” is the most difficult thing for the team.

For varsity cross country runner Cael Schoemann meeting social distancing requirements means starting races with runners separated into different waves. The hardest part is “the start of races,” Schoemann said, “Everyone starts at different times like in waves.”

Masks have been a part of every sport including the starts of cross country races. The start is the main concern with all runners in a relatively close area. “That wave idea kinda helps with socially distancing,” Schoemann said. “Then usually at the start we have to wear masks.”

Another change to every sport is the limit in audience size. Football players are allowed two seats for friends or family. These changes can affect players' performance. “As a coach and as a parent it totally takes away from the environment,” Parent Tana Everts said. “You have to get yourself hyped which is really hard to do sometimes.”

Despite all the changes coaches and athletes are glad to have a season. “Anytime you can have your athletes with your coaches practicing it's a good thing,” Redders said. “There's just a ridiculous number of rules that are changed. But I think everybody agreed that we wanted to have a football season.”

There have still been many good things to come out of the situation, and also changes that will continue in the future. “This has allowed other athletes to step up and fill in,” Helms said. “I think you will see live streaming continue for Varsity events.”