The school year of 2021 has been greenlit for reopening. This also means the reopening of Spring sports, so this includes not being limited to Baseball, lacrosse, track and field, cross country, etc. While this is all good and hearty we must look back at the year 2020. Our lost time of Highschool. 2020 was a hectic year for everyone. Students, teachers, workers, families, etc, but there was one group of people that took a massive hit and that was athletes of all sports. Especially spring sports. They didn’t get their season since lockdown started as soon as the pandemic hit. Sports like baseball, lacrosse, track, and field, cross country, and many more missed their opportunity because of COVID-19.

This seems bad on the surface but when it comes to the player’s this either made or broke their plans with their respective sports. I talked to 3 athletes that happened to have played the same sport of baseball as they seemed more inclined to how they all might be feeling and this is what was received. First I spoke to Shane Murphy (a player of the JV baseball team last year ) and asked how he felt about everything and he said the following “I was disappointed that it was canceled but I used the time to get better for the summer, fall, and upcoming spring season” he had the right attitude for the sport of baseball because everyone though he knew there was nothing he could do as of right now he could always get ready for the upcoming season, and if the upcoming season was canceled too he would have been ready for the season after that. The cancellation of the season had its pros and cons of course. The good is obvious. Less interaction within players would drastically decrease the chance they could have spread the virus around. The cons don’t finish just the season being canceled, it goes deeper. Joseph Kline, a junior that was on the JV baseball team last year for Roosevelt states “ a disconnect and imbalance of my mental and physical health”. The lives of these athletes correlate with the love of their sport. If they are missing their sports, it’s almost like they are missing a piece of themselves. That is very damaging to the brain and the body because there is no substitute for it.

Our players like Shane Murphy looked into other sports like basketball but didn’t feel the same as they knew that baseball wasn’t going anywhere for them. So they wanted to focus on that over anything else. Even though the Roosevelt season was missed, some players decided to not let the flame die out and so they sought out other baseball teams to play for while Roosevelt was out. Our friend Justin Ericson (player on the JV baseball team) said, “I played for the croton baseball team to have a chance to play some type of ball”. Luckily no matter how bad everyone got, our players didn’t let the fire die out and all continue to get better. They all are ready for the upcoming season and all believe their talent and hard work will translate on the field. Shane Murphy said it best “I am very confident that our team is ready”, This upcoming year will be one we will all remember, as a time for growth and missed time we will gain again. As for the writer of this article, I know we will come back to the field better than we have ever have in the past.