The Shoemaker Bugle

By Andrea Arias

On November 9, 2020, John Glenn High School volleyball returned to campus to start conditioning. Volleyball was one of the four sports set to return in November to hopefully have a season starting in December. These included football, volleyball, cross country, and cheerleading.

The school put in strict restrictions on athletic activity, such as maintaining 6-foot distance, temperature checks, grouping to contact trace anyone that gets sick, no carpooling, etc.

While these are adequate rules to hopefully prevent someone from getting sick, it does not assure anyone that they won’t get sick or even that students won’t go out with friends or family on the weekends. Also there are a bunch of teenage girls and guys working out together. How are 3 coaches going to be able to maintain that each student keeps their distance and keeps their mask on?

While many girls have signed to be able to return to these practices, so many more have decided not to go, which means that they do not agree with the school’s decision. I am one of these students. While at first I wanted to return to see my friends and escape my home, I could not bring myself to put my family and friends at risk. Having had my mom already get sick with COVID-19, how could I put them at risk as well as my teammates?

There just seems no way that this was actually going to work.

While I do understand why schools want to start athletics, do they understand the risk that they are putting their students in just by asking them to go back onto campus? The reasons people have been getting sick with COVID-19 is by simply coming into contact with someone who is sick, and the risk of this is that some people are asymptomatic (don’t show any symptoms of Covid), which is why COVID-19 is such a dangerous disease.

Aside from this decision about sports, the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District has still not yet decided if students will have to return to campus for the second semester. From what I’ve gathered, many students and families are worried about returning. Maybe, just like gathering for athletics, it is not going to work right now.