Disappointment spurs inspiration
Pandemic took away sports and forced them into isolation, but scholar-athletes responded with grace and resolve
By Rob Oller The Columbus Dispatch
The coronavirus may think it will get the last laugh, but central Ohio high school senior athletes already have beaten COVID-19 to the punchline by turning a cruel joke into an inspirational stand-up routine of perseverance and personal growth.
That’s not to suggest it has been easy. Losing your spring sports season — track and field, baseball, softball, lacrosse, boys tennis and boys volleyball all were canceled — to a pandemic hurts, even if it was for safety reasons.
The same goes for seniors in basketball, wrestling and hockey who saw their winter state tournaments canceled when the virus first blew up, in March.
It wasn’t just athletes who felt the sting, either. The coronavirus did a number on all seniors, and that number was zero — as in, no senior prom, no senior class trip, no traditional graduation and no gathering in classrooms or hallways.
But if it’s true that adversity builds character, the 201 seniors represented in the 2020 Dispatch and Encova Insurance Scholar-Athletes Awards program stand atop a mountain of integrity-honoring intentions.
As a way to acknowledge the unprecedented circumstances surrounding this year’s program, each scholar-athlete nominated by school administrators was surveyed about what they had learned about themselves and others during these trying times.
A few examples of the seniors’ takeaways fairly represent the whole:
Football player Raymond McDonald of Franklin Heights missed hanging out with friends in the school building.
“Being at school kept me around people and sociable, compared to being quarantined,” he wrote. “It was a wake-up call that taught me not to take time like that for granted. Being around friends, joking and laughing, is always a lasting memory.”
Harvest Prep basketball player Christopher Anthony wrote, “Achieve a little as one; achieve a lot together.”
Heath swimmer Sydney Mason pointed out that, “Tough times are easier to get through when someone you trust is by your side.”
And Granville baseball player Jake Stone spoke of paying forward by paying back, urging “the underclassmen to savor every moment because you’ll never know when you’ll play your last game.”
The consensus among Scholar-Athlete Awards honorees was that as challenging as it was to lose out on so much, the setbacks provided needed perspective.
When the Ohio High School Athletic Association first postponed the winter state tournaments on March 12, then canceled them on March 26, followed by the cancellation of spring sports on April 20, the emotional fallout followed a similar pattern: denial giving way to devastation and finally resignation.
But teenagers are nothing if not resilient — it would seem more so than many adults, including parents who in some cases took the lost seasons harder than their kids — and their bounce-back has not gone unnoticed.
Coaches, even grizzled veterans who have been in their roles for three decades or more, routinely rave about how well senior athletes have excelled in not just holding up but also growing up.
Many of the seniors say they used the time away from sports to draw closer to family, work on becoming more patient and turn obstacles into opportunities. A common theme is that while life does not go as planned, positive change can be discovered.
“I have learned how to handle difficult and frustrating situations with grace,” said Lucy Reed of Fisher Catholic. “I learned that the world can adapt to new situations quickly. In times of weakness and trouble, creative and beautiful things manifest.”
Indeed, it doesn’t take much to find silver linings. Some seniors discovered a creative side they never knew existed, thanks to being cooped up at home. Evenings playing board games replaced those involving softball games. Dessert tastings subbed for Gatorade.
Other seniors went the practical route by getting jobs to pay for college. That revealed another familiar refrain: Don’t sit around and mope. Embracing the situation with a positive attitude makes all the difference.
Naturally, not every athlete saw a half-full glass every day. But most have kept anger and disappointment from festering into resentment and bitterness. Maybe the success rate is not 100%, but as one senior explained, “Everyone is affected but each person shows it differently.”
If that sounds like wisdom, well, sometimes it takes the worst of times to bring out the best in people. These seniors “can’t redo high school,” as one put it, but most are working on re-doing themselves for the better.
roller@dispatch.com
@rollerCD