East High School did it, so did North High School, Lincoln High School, and Roosevelt High School. All these schools and more suspended their fall sports because the state wanted us to continue with online education. This caused seniors to lose out on part of their sport season.
Schools all over Iowa have lost their season of fall sports because of the COVID-19 outbreak that started in late January 2020, with the first wave of COVID-19 positive cases going up. Lots of schools tried to start their season up for players to practice with their teammates and participate in games. Many got shut down or suspended because of players and coaches testing positive for the virus causing them to quarantine for 14 days.
“It makes me reminisce on what volleyball used to be like and feel like, I took my last three seasons for granted, I just miss it all.” Senior Varsity volleyball player Tayjah Butts said.
With sports out for the season, many seniors lost their chance to earn scholarships for college for being a good athlete. In many high school games, college coaches show up and watch teams play and also see how they work with each other. With COVID-19 hitting the USA so hard, there is limited seating so each player can only have one or two guests come and watch the games. This makes earning scholarships harder to earn if college coaches can’t come and watch teams play.
“I only got to go to one cross country meet this year, so I missed my whole season. We didn’t get a conference, state, or a normal banquet with family and friends. We also had a lot of people quit or decide not to join this year, so we missed out on having a larger team,” Senior Girls Cross Country runner Marissa Thompson said.
With the sports at East High School being shut down for fall sports and possibly winter sports also Our school is not able to play in competitions and games to win for our school. Competing in sports like football, volleyball, cross country, and many more gives are school recognition and shows other parents and student-athletes that East high School athletes play to win.
Social distancing is a big thing for the US right now, so with the guild lines telling us to stay six feet apart, sanitize all the time, wear a mask when outside of your home, and wash are hands often. This is a lot to do in practice, for example, in volleyball, all players have to touch the ball to keep it in the air, so they must clean them and sanitize them after people touch them.
” Practices were difficult and confusing at first because of social distance. I had on and off training which was stressful because we couldn’t use the school pool so I had to buy a membership for a pool and then since other schools are having the same issue they would be there and I couldn’t get enough practices in because it was too full,” senior swimmer Alaya Blake said.