Charlotte Gilmore ’21

The good thing about running is that even without an organized practice, we can run every day. The team has been using an app called Strava where we can post our runs and see what other people have been doing. It is strange to be running and training without any races in the foreseeable future — that definitely diminished my motivation. Lately I’ve been focusing my training on running farther and building up mileage, and also just exploring trails, pausing to look around, and overall having more flexibility and fun! That’s not to say that I don’t miss the team or racing, though. Luckily for me, cross country is much preferable to track, so I can look forward to that in the fall (hopefully). Running also provides a sense of peace for me — it’s a constant amidst everything that is strange right now. I do know that some people are concerned about recruitment — most schools look at spring track times because they’re less variable than cross country ones. Overall, I’m enjoying exploring different aspects of running other than the normal training and racing schedule, but I miss running with the team every day.

Anlin Kopf ’21

Dance in lockdown has been hard but not impossible. For me, dance is a team exercise where everybody learns together and practices together to create something really cool. Of course, this becomes substantially more difficult with the social isolation policies. But the dance clubs that I am part of have been solving this in different ways. For Dance Club, we have been having online Zoom calls. Most of the time we goof off, but we also use the calls to learn new dances together and maintain a sense of togetherness. Whoever is teaching the new dance has to learn it mirrored so that everybody else can copy the moves, which is difficult but really fun. For the Korean club, everybody has been taking videos of themselves doing their parts in the dances so that we can all be edited together later. I haven’t seen the final products yet, but I’m really excited to see them when they come out on our YouTube channel. I’m really glad that my dance groups are able to still meet and create something together, even though we are apart.

Dylan Parker ’21

I’m a junior athlete who usually plays both club soccer and school tennis during the spring season, and I’ve been trying to stay active by exercising, but it can be hard to stay motivated when it still isn’t clear when we will be back or what we’re going to do about the missed sports. For our tennis team, we had just made the final cuts right before school and all sports were shut down. The new team wasn’t even given a chance to get to know each other before we were all sent home. As a junior, it feels terrible to miss out on the whole season that I’ve been working hard for, and I feel even worse for the seniors who aren’t able to play in their final year. It’s the same feeling for soccer as well, where we have so many committed players who are patiently waiting for the time when we are able to play again. Of course I would love to be able to play sports again as soon as possible, but I also acknowledge the fact that we all have to bide our time and wait until people can feel safer about this crazy time.

Jeshurun Reyen ’20

Quarantine and COVID-19 have had an adverse effect on all of us, especially swimmers. Sure, we can still do cardio and bodyweight exercises to keep in shape, but it is just so different from being in the pool, and it’s going to take so much time for me to refamiliarize myself with the feel of the water and get back into swimming shape. I personally don't have access to a gym or weights, and I can feel and see my muscles atrophying. COVID-19 also ended our swim season a month and a half short, thereby cancelling the most important meets that we spent months training for. It’s such a shame because not only did we lose the opportunity to finally put our best performances forward and see the results of our endless laps in the pool, but we’ve also lost the memories that could’ve been. This hurts especially for seniors like me who are graduating this year who didn’t get what was supposed to be our irreplaceable parting high school memories. It’s pretty depressing but there isn't really anything anyone can do about it. At the end of the day though, we should try to stay positive because many people are going through things far worse than not swimming.