Girls’ basketball season delayed
Team makes the best of tight COVID-19 restrictions
Senior Sadie Yarosh looks for a teammate to pass the ball to. The girls basketball season got postponed due to COVID-19.
December 16, 2020
The COVID-19 safety regulations, which began Nov. 21, require winter sports to adhere to the safest practices, causing the girls’ basketball team to delay their season until it is deemed safe for them to start again.
According to head coach Arsenio Richardson, the earliest the season could start is late December, depending on the amount of COVID-19 cases in Minnesota and the government decision, but there is still a lot of uncertainty.
“The season could start as early as Dec. 21, but it’s all dependent on what the Governor says as far as allowing youth sports to continue,” Richardson said. “But those could all be out the window and they can go with something totally different as well.”
According to senior captain Sadie Yarosh, the team is making the most out of the delayed season by having the team participate in strength and conditioning workouts over Zoom calls.
“A lot of our girls like to go to the gym and workout and want to stay fit, and one of our basketball coaches, Idalis Riley, is a personal trainer — so every Wednesday a group of us get on a Zoom call and she just leads us in about half an hour of workouts,” Yarosh said.
Sophomore Stayci Spates said the online workouts have helped to connect the team since they can’t see each other in person.
“We all turn our cameras on at the end of the workout, and we thank our coach for the workout,” Stayci said. “I enjoy it because I know that my teammates are there and it’s better than nothing.” “
Richardson said he is hopeful that the Minnesota Sports Committee will allow practices to start again and competitions will be scheduled shortly after.
“Right now they’re looking at it like this — if we’re gonna allow the students to practice, then we should let them have competitions and games as well,” Richardson said.
Yarosh thinks that they will have a couple of practices at the least, and the team should stay hopeful.
“The season definitely won’t be as long but hopefully we’ll get to a point where we can play together for at least a couple of games,” Yates said.
According to Spates, she is hopeful they’ll be able to have practices safely together soon but thinks that safety is more important than the basketball season.
“I wish we could safely have a season, but I’d honestly rather not play then put people’s lives at risk — I think that people’s lives matter more than my sport, so I can go without playing basketball this year,” Spates said.