Until pandemic hit, participating in sports helped high schooler cope

LOS ANGELES — Dalia Hurtado plays on the varsity football, volleyball and soccer teams at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles and participates in soccer, softball and boxing through neighborhood and club programs.

“I get my mind off a lot of things. I stay occupied,” the 16-year-old says. “That’s why I love doing it.”

It has become a way of coping, too, as she tries to find her way in this world, buoyed by a tenacity that has defined her life from an early age.

Dalia was born in Los Angeles to parents who have returned to Mexico; they can’t come here to cheer at games and won’t be able to send her off to the prom or watch her graduate next spring. Her life, like her family, was split by a border that couldn’t be crossed from either side.

In the past few months, her life has been made even more complicated by a deadly virus that has taken away the two things that have kept her focused: School and sports.

Last fall, Dalia was rushing from volleyball practice every afternoon to change into her football gear, stuffing her long black hair into an oversized helmet and hitting the field to work on her kicking. In the spring, before the shutdown, she often rode a bus more than an hour each way to soccer, boxing and softball practices and games, doing homework on the way.

“The unique thing about it, which makes it really awesome, is that she’s (inspiring) a bunch of other female athletes to come out and try multiple sports,” Garfield football coach Lorenzo Hernandez said.

Now, with little to do, Dalia’s mind sometimes takes her to dark, sad places.

“I stay in my room alone, and I think about my brothers and sisters and my mom,” she said. “I go through those memories and all that when I’m alone.”

She has had to work harder to keep her body and mind occupied. She’s spent time in Corona and with a cousin in Fresno. She yearns to visit her mother in Mexico, a trip she had long planned but was forced to cancel because of the threat of COVID-19.

“I don’t want to get them infected,” Dalia says. “What if I get it in the plane or something?”

So she runs in the morning and plays soccer in the yard by herself.

“It’s not the same,” she says, “because I don’t see my friends and my teammates.”

Her grandfather has promised to build her a small gym in the backyard, stocking it with weights. But that project hasn’t advanced much beyond the planning stages. For much of the spring she also studied online.

“I have good grades,” Dalia says. “I made my grandma proud this time.”

‘The unique thing about it, which makes it really awesome, is that she’s (inspiring) a bunch of other female athletes to come out and try multiple sports’ Lorenzo Hernandez, Garfield football coach

LOS ANGELES TIMES Dalia Hurtado was born in Los Angeles to parents who have returned to Mexico. Her life has been made even more complicated by the pandemic that has taken away school and sports.