This past year has been chaotic. The extensive amount of changes that have happened in order to adapt to COVID-19 have affected all different aspects of student lives: classroom experience, social life and sports. But now that sports are returning, a sense of normalcy is reinstating, but for some the normalcy doesn’t last for long.
Many student athletes have been identified as close contacts to students who have tested positive for COVID-19, forcing them into quarantine.
Within the last two weeks, there has been a surge in COVID cases within Staples, forcing 200 students into quarantine as of March 23. Once contact traced, the student is forced to abstain from playing their sport for two weeks even if they have gotten a negative COVID test. Being contact traced is negatively impacting the one normal thing that has returned to normal: sports.
Marley Lopez Paul ’21, for example, played her last basketball game without knowing it was her last. The last basketball game of her career was ripped away in an instant due to contact tracing from school.
“Basketball 100% brought a kind of normalcy to the crazy life we have been having since last year,” Lopez said.
Jess Mysel ’23 was another student who got contact traced in school and was forced to quarantine and miss lacrosse preseason.
“I understand the importance of following safety protocols, but I wish I could have gone [to lacrosse preseason] considering I [tested] negative [for COVID],” Mysel said.
Being forced to abstain from one of the things that give students entertainment and excitement is upsetting and frustrating for them.
“It was incredibly sad to have to watch my team fight without me as I watched from home and couldn’t do anything,” Lopez said. “This quarantine was the worst possible timing [because it] cut off the exciting end of my high school career.”