By Ed Piper
The hardest thing about sports events being cancelled due to COVID is that I don't get my entertainment.
No, seriously, I enjoy being back roaming around, driving to La Jolla High sports events, seeing people I know, often being out in the open (for outdoor events), and viewing the individual and team exploits of squads from the school.
Who doesn't remember the doldrums and difficulties of sitting at home, living disconnected from those you love and those you enjoy, as we struggled through 2020 post-"Friday the 13th" (March 13, 2020, the day the whole thing on the West Coast went down)?
Well, today, January 12, 2022--22 months after "Friday the 13th"--I just got word that the Vikings wrestlers' dual meet scheduled for Canyon Hills High (the former Serra High) this afternoon got cancelled, with "no word on rescheduling", according to La Jolla High head coach Ryan Lindenblatt.
I'm subbing today at a high school in another district (Poway Unified), one that played football against La Jolla last fall (and where quarterback Jackson Stratton suffered a broken right scapula on a running play) and I was going to stop off for an In-N-Out treat in Rancho Bernardo, then jet over to CYHS in Tierrasanta for weigh-ins and the meet this afternoon commencing at 5 p.m.
But it was not to be, with COVID numbers carrying on.
But a second thought: I'd rather it be this way then us going back to stay-at-home restrictions for the school day a la 2020. Enough of that.
I'd rather us "bumble along", with some student absences yet classes in person still happening. I'm hoping we can survive until the end of winter, when temperatures get warmer, with the expectation that COVID infections and exposures will decrease.
None of this is to minimize or fail to take to heart the heart-breaking stories of many who have lost loved ones to the pandemic, or who have suffered themselves. I had a fellow substitute teacher who is over COVID and just now getting back on track.
I have been pretty sheltered from the direct effects of the infection. I have heard and read of many families who have suffered through this whole period, with family members stricken and eventually dying. Others who have suffered through scary times on ventilators, or intubated, and so forth. It doesn't look fun, and my prayers go out for all of them.
So, in my selfish world, with no one in our family having gotten COVID, I can muse about missing a measly wrestling meet today. Not real important in the big picture, right?
It's just, life was a lot easier prior to COVID. I hope that we can get back to a "normalcy" eventually when we don't have to wear masks at work all the time (I'm wearing one now as I sub in last period math), and we don't have to limit gatherings like I expect people will with the three-day weekend including Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Monday coming up this weekend.
My plaudits go out to all the coaches and team members in all the programs at LJHS who have stayed the course, and who do the best they can as this second winter of COVID moves into mid-January. We didn't know what this school year was going to hold, and now we now.
I would dare to say that this Omicron wave is not nearly as deadly as events a year ago, but that's coming from a non-medical-expert and from quite a distance from the center of the pandemic struggle and effort going on. News reports have said Omicron is not taking people down as harshly as last year's strain, though contagion seems to be increased and more people are getting infected.
I'm noticing in my general reading comments about the 1918 epidemic (pandemic?) that I never would have noticed before. Now I know.
Let's hope we can work through this, get through winter, and start seeing lowered infection rates and illnesses, even deaths. Then we could get back to practice, team gatherings, athletic events without fear of cancellation. A pretty spoiled existence we lived prior to the coming of COVID.
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