Kiyomi Kishaba
Opinion Editor
On March 12, the spring athletics’ season was canceled due to COVID-19. Lute athletes scattered home across the country, but team communities refused to break.
Jordan Haworth ‘22 is a member of the Lute baseball team. As a spring sport, baseball’s season was cut short. After mourning the loss of their season, Coach Soete made the effort to call each of his athletes individually, and set up a virtual full team meeting.
For Haworth, the meetings serve as a reminder of the connection between himself and his teammates. Normally, they would be training and seeing each other everyday, but in this strange reality their faces are reserved to a small box on a screen.
Haworth has two more years to play baseball as a Lute, but for the seniors on the team, this season was all they had left. The players hope to celebrate their incredible seniors in May, dependent on the COVID-19 situation. But no matter the obstacles, the team will find a way to honor their graduating class.
Despite losing his second season of baseball, Haworth chose to be grateful for what he does have instead of focusing on the negative.
“It’s important for our team to stay connected because we have to control the controllables and not worry about what we can’t change,” Haworth said. “This whole situation is hard but it’s not just us, it’s a worldwide issue, so we gotta stay positive and make the best of everything.”
As baseball and other spring sports pick up the pieces of their season, fall and winter sports use this time to create a foundation for next season. Women’s soccer player Vivian Shinall ‘22 stated her team recognized the importance of staying connected as a team through this crisis.
“In these calls, we’ve spent time catching up, but have also talked about planning for our fall season and have done some personality and character building activities,” Shinall said. “We lost our spring season this year, so we’ve also been sharing ways to train on our own and stay motivated.”
Since soccer concluded their official season in the fall, their calls consist of current freshmen, sophomores, and juniors; the player who would normally be on the spring practice team. In future calls, Shinall says the team will include incoming committed freshmen so the team can meet as they normally would during spring at PLU.
Shinall believes having these calls now will benefit the team in the long run. In order to succeed next season and defend their Northwest Conference champions title, the team must have, “mutual trust and common goals.” By establishing these factors in the spring, the team will come back in the fall at their very best.
Lauren Wilson ‘21 on the women’s volleyball team has a similar opinion. Holding meetings now will help the team in the future, and the squad plans to include 2020 recruits starting in May.
In the volleyball meetings, different groups, like captains, juniors, seniors, etc, take turns leading the meeting. Wilson recalled some fun activities such as a virtual scavenger hunt and show and tells, along with weekly life updates from the squad.
“Our team prides ourselves in the close-knit bond we create, so these meetings help us do that, even from a distance,” Wilson said.
Like soccer, volleyball would normally be training right now. To make up for not being on the court, the volleyball coach is leading the team in virtual workouts everyday for two weeks. Wilson believes the training, along with consistent meetings, will benefit the team greatly when they are back in the gym in the fall.
As isolation continues, Lute athletes are preparing optimistically to return to competition next fall. In the meantime, they are relying on their community to help each other through this life-changing pandemic.
Baseball team supporting volleyball at a game in November, photo from @plubaseball instagram.
