Ian Dempsey ‘21
STAFF WRITER
From start to finish, 180 days of school is an absolute grind. Five days a week and 36 weeks of the year, it is safe to say why a myriad of students feel this repetitive process is strenuous. However, what if there was a way to make school appealing to everybody?
Say good morning to Zoom, the communications platform enabling meetings over technological devices to take place through a cloud-based software system. Gaining popularity left and right, most of the athletes at Riverview have taken the initiative to go remote to avoid getting quarantined. Because nobody wants to be trapped inside their home for two weeks when they don’t feel sick at all, right?
This is true and is the primary driving force as to why a solid amount of the sports participants have decided to terminate their brick-and-mortar learning experience until season’s end. Besides, who wouldn’t prefer to sleep in an extra hour or two, so he or she could feel more motivated about the upcoming day?
Starting with the Varsity volleyball squad, a certain star kept finding herself drowning in hot water when it came to the COVID protocols set in place. This member turned out to be Madison Binkley, a senior beach volleyball commit to Florida State University. A series of unfortunate events seemed to bring in bad luck for Binkley as she was forced to quarantine twice in the span of a little bit over one month. This was a result of her exposure near someone in the classroom and, one week later, after she came back from her first go-around, she had to retreat right back to the stomping grounds of her home. She was obligated to not leave the premises of her house, even though her team was continuing to play in volleyball games during the season.
However, despite missing a large portion of her season because of these restrictions, she was able to learn some valuable lessons, and this is where positivity may be challenging for one to discover in this situation.
What Binkley experienced during these stressful moments was a state of vulnerability as all this was completely unavoidable on her part. There was absolutely nothing she could have done to terminate all the drama that was occurring around her seat. If she was able to stay healthy and not get the virus though, that’s all anyone could ask for, from her teammates to coaches to friends and family. Grasping onto persistence was extremely key for Binkley as is and will be the case for any student-athlete here at Riverview who lives through the perplexing circumstances of being quarantined.
As a result, the volleyball team was recommended by their coaches to stay at home, and because of this action, a solid number of the girls took that initiative and came back to school as soon as their season had ended.
Another sport that has attempted to place themselves in an imaginary bubble is the Varsity basketball squad. Coach Rudi Fraraccio, the head basketball coach, gave advice to his players to do school virtually and avoid missing games since they are plentiful in one full week of action.
With the value being anywhere in between 3-5 games or possibly more, two weeks in quarantine could be a massive blow for one of these members. Do the math in multiplying those numbers by 2, and somebody could potentially be forced to sit out 6-10 games while feeling no symptoms at all.
Unfortunately, that has been the latest norm around the school system, as until the virus has cleared the entire country, these strict measures will continue to stick in place. Take Jakobi Davis for instance, a two-way sports phenom at Riverview who plays both basketball and baseball as one quarantine phase was enough to make him decide to stay remote from our campus for the rest of the year. Not wanting to miss any more games for each respective sport, he officially submitted the form to go remote. He said he “misses his friends more than anything” but simply “has to do what he has to do.”
To conclude, as baseball season approaches, many of the guys have decided to go remote before tryouts following Head Varsity Coach Jeremy Schmidt’s advice, so indeed that number expects to increase shortly. With immensely similar circumstances to the basketball schedule, two weeks in quarantine could be about the same number of games missed, accounting for 1/3 of the season.
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