Covid-19 plays a major role on student athletes and sports teams, causing absences of teammates, and cancellations of games, competitions and meets. The result is athletes, coaches, and teams in stressful situations.
When athletes play sports they rely on teammates. There is not much a team can do when players have to quarantine, except putting trust in their teammates and coaches and, to try their best to make the changes they need to succeed.
The Varsity Cheer team has experienced the difficulty of players being out due to COVID-19. Cheer depends heavily on every single player being present. Each round has girls in it and when you have to make changes due to that person being absent that involves new people learning new formations.
Senior and cheerleader Elizabeth Schuietema experienced a ten day Covid-19 quarantine, missing out on both practices and a competition. She also had to deal with having her other basing partner and backspot gone, leaving two new spots that needed to be filled. When having people from a stunt group gone, it takes time to build trust up with new people and feel comfortable with them. The stunt group only had three days to become comfortable with each other. The team had to go down in difficulty due to a new stunt group, which meant that in order to get the difficulty points back other stunt groups needed to up their difficulty.
“At first, we were stressed about [people missing], and we just took a lot of time at practice to figure out what the best way to go about the changes, ’’ Schuitema said.
Just this season, the cheer team had 14 girls who have had to quarantine as well as two of the coaches, for ten days. This led to one canceled competition and lots of last minute formation changes, and extra practicing at home.
“We learned how much we need each other and I think we grew an appreciation for being able to be together at practice and competitions, ”Schuietema said.
Cheer athletes were not the only athletes that were impacted by quarantine. Sophomore swimmer Michael Hoard had to be quarantined in the middle of his season, as well as 20 other swimmers. There is not much he could do to stay in shape for swimming being stuck at home without a pool, but one thing he made sure to do was make time to stay mentally prepared for when he could return.
“I anticipated coming back and thinking [about] what I was going to do to get back in shape as soon as possible and get ready for upcoming meets. I was mentally prepared,” Hoard said.
Hoard had to experience the feeling of not being able to swim with his team, leaving him feeling upset not being able to be at meets or practices. There was one meet in particular Hoard was especially disappointed that he had to miss. The Grand Rapids Christian meet was a big meet for the swim team, but both Michael Hoard and Caleb Howe had to miss due to Covid-19.
“I knew that especially in our meet against Grand Rapids Christian we would’ve won so that makes me feel sad and now I just want to make it up to them,” Hoard said.
Hoard managed to stay caught up with how his team was doing while in quarantine by looking at apps that have the details of how their meets were going, messaging teammates, and coaches. As soon as Hoard could return in the water he made sure he began working double time, to get back to where he was when he left. By his first day back at school out of quarantine he was already back to swimming in a swim meet.
“[COVID] definitely made us stronger mentally and our affinity for the sport grew because we wanted to get back as fast as possible and aid our team,” Hoard said.
