By Freddie Fine
Though COVID-19 caused sports teams at LREI to take a hiatus from practicing, students have now returned, but with mixed feelings. Despite the fact that the pandemic is still taking its toll on the United States, players returned to practice during the week of October 12th, almost two months later than normal.
“Is the added risk of getting COVID worse than the reward for playing soccer with my friends and with my teammates? That’s really the question for me, it’s not an easy question…” said Harvey Van Blerkom, a junior on the boys soccer team at LREI. Many student-athletes have asked this same question when in-person practice for all of the fall sports began earlier this month. These sports are boys soccer, girls soccer, cross country, and girls volleyball. A player from each team provided insight into their practices.
For the first month of the school year, each team had Zoom practice twice a week. Although it was important to do some sort of exercise as a team, players had varying opinions as to how useful these practices really were. “I thought it was really unnecessary. I understood the thought behind it behind it because we didn’t get a preseason, so I guess it was kind of to just get us in the mindset of playing, but it was all just do some jumping jacks and most people had their cameras off and I don’t think anyone was actually doing anything, so I think it was kind of stupid,” said Lily Parks, a senior on the girls soccer team. As it is with any team sport, practicing individually as opposed to as a team is difficult. For soccer, you can workout by yourself, and work on your skill with the ball, but can’t develop further than that.
An athlete on the girls volleyball team described how it is more difficult than soccer to practice on your own. Piper Jassem, a junior on the volleyball team, explained that, “…volleyball requires certain equipment to really make it work, so it was really little workouts and stuff but nothing was extremely beneficial. Also it was such a big group of people so it was hard having one coach telling everyone what to do.” Sam Saslow, a junior on the cross country team, had similar feelings to Piper. He explained how “it’s easier to run more [when at school], when I’m alone I can kinda just quit whenever.” Lack of equipment and motivation made online practices difficult, especially after a long day of Zoom classes. Although volleyball and cross country both have individual aspects, part of playing sports is the team aspect. For volleyball, this can consist of learning how to play well together. For cross country, your teammates push you further to run at the best of your ability. These are aspects you lose when online, however, it’s not so simple to practice in person anymore.
Safety is the biggest concern when it comes to doing anything in the pandemic. Every team has health guidelines to follow, which is something that Sam appreciates. He described how “it’s a small group, and we all have our masks on, so I feel pretty safe. I honestly feel safer than I would in school, like when we have classes.” Sam described cross country as more of an individual sport compared to the other sports, although they practice as a team. Since cross country is just running, the players aren’t required to interact closely, however, other sports require closer interactions.
Piper described this contrast, who had very different experiences playing volleyball. She explained how, “in terms of working out and stuff, it’s definitely better in person, but personally I think just because of Corona I feel like either we should practice outside or not in person because I feel like we’re all in an enclosed space, and when you’re moving around so much, it’s definitely hard to keep that distance between you. I think on one hand I am happier to do the practices in person, but on the other hand I don’t know how safe it is.” Piper’s main concern is that the volleyball practices have been inside at Thompson St. Gym. The team is quite big, and being able to practice inside and keep the six foot distance has been difficult. Piper, Sam, Lily, and Harvey all agreed that in-person practice is much more beneficial than online practice, but Piper took it with a larger grain of salt than others because they are the only sport inside.
The high school hasn’t had a positive COVID case yet. However, one student reportedly had a false positive shortly after the first practices. Lily described the scare from this, saying, “I heard someone in [11th grade] had Corona, but then I heard that wasn’t true so I was scared for a hot second but yeah, I’m definitely happy to be back now.” Hearing of a positive case in the community – although it was false positive – is enough to instill fear into others because people don’t know what the consequences will be. If someone from the girls soccer team was exposed to that person, would the whole team have to quarantine? Would Lily be at risk despite not having been exposed directly to the person? These were all questions that at the time, but there were no answers.
This is part of what happens when you play sports, and as described by Harvey at the beginning, practices are all a risk-reward scenario. All of the players felt that the reward of having practices are worth it, some more so than others. For now, they’re all going to continue going to practice and working to improve their game. If all the teams play safely and follow the guidelines, there will hopefully be no reason to stop practicing. Harvey summed it up perfectly, saying: “I think everything you do at this time is putting yourself at risk, and the more you do the more at risk you’re going to be.”