Today I was looking back at the last post on our website and it had to with basketball all-stars. It was a March post, the month when everything changed. Fast forward to the end of July and Covid-19’s impact remains ever present.
Over the past four and a half months the high school sports scene has gone dark and with Section II’s announcement that the start to the fall season would be delayed into September, with the possibility that fall sports could actually play out in the spring, the only thing certain about high school sports is the uncertainty.
When play came to a halt this past March, the Cambridge and Mechanicville girls basketball squads were in pursuit of a state title having advanced into regional play after earning Section II championships. I wouldn’t have bet against either group being the last team standing in their respective classifications, something obviously we’ll never know.
All athletes this spring were also forced to take a knee, and with the fall schedule on hold all three high school seasons have been compromised by the uncompromising virus.
Over these past few months we’ve missed the many special and unique things that sports has to offer.
How about the roar of a crowd when a player rises and buries a go-ahead jumper with seconds remaining, watching a centerfielder run down a ball in the gap on a warm May afternoon, or the sound of a fast ball from a hard throwing lefty popping the catchers mitt.
We’ve missed momentum swings and come-from-behind W’s, squads that understand the meaning of teamwork, a packed house for a rivalry game, and players with a high level of “want to”.
Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for a header, off a perfect corner, that finds the back of the net, or a tight spiral finding a receiver in stride on a go route for six.
And while those are some things we’ve gone without and look forward to seeing again real soon, we realize that sports is just the candy store relative to the bigger picture, where individuals in our country and around the world continue to fight the virus.
Here’s hoping that through our science and medical communities efforts, we soon will have an answer for Covid-19 and safely restart activities on and off the athletic fields.
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