Student Athlete Perspective

A lot of things have changed in all aspects of because of coronavirus, but today I will be focusing on how it affects student athletes like me. Overall, it has changed for the worse and not the better.  While I understand why they make us wear masks while we play, it is extremely hard to run and play with a mask on that is limiting your air intake. Practices are mostly the same except for the masks, which isn’t the biggest deal but still not ideal. Earlier in my season, we were still in phase 3 so we did not have to wear masks during games but last week, as you know we went back down to phase 2 requiring us to wear a mask while playing during a game. All in all, playing sports during the pandemic isn’t the worst thing and is just slightly different than normal, but it is not the worst thing in the world.  I think I speak for myself, and every other student athlete when I say that I am glad to be playing on a team with my friends and having fun. The officials and coaches are enforcing the mask rule as much as they can as well as keeping us social distancing when possible. The contact hasn’t really changed though, all players are trying to play as they would normally, no one is really taking extra precaution to not make contact with other players. We do not have any special traditions that I know of such as team dinners on the soccer team but I know that other sports do, I’m sure Covid heavily effected how that goes down and have come up with alternatives to spend time with their teammates.