Prep athletes proving to be very essential
Wynter Radcliffe clung on to hope as she stepped into a nursing home.
Though the coronavirus pandemic originally postponed her season and forced the junior’s once well-balanced life of school, work and sports into chaos, Radcliffe continued on. She and Glen Burnie softball teammate junior Lilly Cook continued to work, both on their swing and as dining servers in the Brightview Severna Park senior living home, where two residents died from complications of COVID-19 in April, the disease caused by coronavirus.
Balancing that kind of work with online classes threatens to overwhelm Radcliffe all the time. Last month’s official cancellation of the season devastated her. The Gophers had been gearing up to make their return to the Class 4A state final.
“We wanted a senior night, and another good season. We wanted to see each other every day again, but now we have to sit behind a screen in class and to talk to each other,” Radcliffe, a starting pitcher for the Gophers, wrote in an
email.
“Lilly and I continued working at our job, still doing softball on the side, but it gets so tough to balance with all our assignments on Google classroom. It’s like, we need money, we need to do our school, and at the same time we want to better our softball game.”
Most student-athletes’ contribution to flattening the curve is a necessary one, staying home and away f rom immunocompromised individuals — but it’s not true for all.
“A lot of kids, their parents aren’t letting them work,” Cook said. “I feel grateful my parents are, and letting me make a change. So many people are out of work. I feel like I should take advantage of what I have. It’s upsetting we can’t have softball, but I’m glad I can do something.”
Cook, who is technically zoned to attend North County, began working at Brightview Severna Park last June to fulfill a requirement that allows her to participate in the BioMedical Allied Health magnet program at Glen Burnie. She increased her hours when the MPSSAA initially postponed her season in mid-March and clocks in every day after online classes, masked, gloved and sanitized.
As she and Radcliffe leave meals on the chairs outside the vulnerable residents’ rooms, the thought of staying away from everyone rolls through Cook’s mind all the time.
The Brightview Severna Park residents have been quarantined for more than two months. Cook loves too many residents to name, and misses them. From a safe distance, she listens to the residents’ complaints while exchanging attempts to make them happy.
COVID-19 has killed nearly 1,000 people living or working in Maryland nursing homes, but Cook says there are no currently known cases at Brightview Severna Park. No residents have been tested on-site, to Cook’s knowledge, but those who visit the doctor for unrelated illnesses receive the test. Of the two residents who died, one did so after visiting the hospital for high blood pressure, where she caught the virus and died.
“That’s the hard part about working at Brightview,” Cook said. “They’re all elderly people. Anything could happen at any time. Especially when you build a connection with them, and they pass away, and it’s really hard.”
One Brightview Severna Park associate contracted the coronavirus, and after interviewing seven other employees who’d been in contact, three more tested positive and returned to work after a two-week quarantine.
“We’re putting ourselves at risk, a little bit,” Cook said.
Mikey Magorka tested positive for the coronavirus about two months ago. Hewas lucky, dealing only with a flu-like fever for seven days. He was even luckier that his father, who is considered high risk, didn’t get sick, too.
Magorka doesn’t worry as much for his own safety now. The Arundel junior, who plays soccer in the fall, started working 20 to 25 hours per week as a cashier at a Wegmans grocery store at the beginning of April.
His high-risk father is something Magorka has to keep in mind when he returns home from work. He washes his hands, just as he does hourly at work. Experts are still studying whether recovery equals immunity. Risk still surrounds Magorka. For Magorka, it’s worth it. The same shoppers return so often, every three or four days, that they’ve become familiar to him. Every day he walks into Wegmans is a day he steps back into society.
“I don’t feel like I’m living,” he said. “But when I go to work, I am. I’m talking to people. It’s really nice.”
Magorka’s an outlier among his fellow athletes, who are mostly tucked away at home.
“[Some], they look at me like, ‘Wow, you’re trying to spread the disease,’” Magorka said. “But I can’t really spread it. I think I’m doing better by trying to help in my own way.”
Howard High softball player Emily Polimeni has a complex understanding of what it looks like to work on the front lines of the pandemic each day. When Gov. Larry Hogan ordered the closure of nonessential businesses in March, Polimeni, who makes the food and works the cash register at Panera Bread, served 10 people a day. As time has passed, it’s closer to 30. Polimeni doesn’t have to come in physical contact with customers, as most order food via delivery, but she still bears witness to the figures still taking on the virus.
“It’s weird seeing people out. At our location, we normally get a lot of police officers and paramedics. They come by to get coffee,” Polimeni said.
She’s not the only one in the family braving the pandemic-struck world. Her father works as a Prince George’s County firefighter, and it’s helped Polimeni keep a rational head about facing exposure.
“I understood what was going on, especially with his knowledge about the situation,” Polimeni said. “For me, it’s not necessarily as I was worried as I was just more cautious when going out.”
When the coronavirus’ impact began to take a toll on Maryland businesses in mid-March, Panera cut Polimeni’s hours to 15 per week, but as government business loans arrived, she’s up to 30 hours. That’s in addition to a handful of high school classes and a college class as well.
It’s not too much, she said. She’d planned a lighter academic schedule this semester in anticipation of giving her all during the softball season. She’d spent the winter training “10 times harder” than she ever had for her senior year, before she’d head off to play at Elizabethtown College.
Polimeni always wanted to “live, breathe softball.” Now, in what free time she has, she takes softball in spurts: three days per week of training with a Bowline and workouts as often as she can. That’s her solitary work, a coping session as much as conditioning.
As much danger as leaving the house to perform essential work entails, Polimeni remembers to value others’ safety first. Some, like her grandparents, she doesn’t see at all. The rest, she serves 6 feet away.