A new leaf for fans – and players – as Masters marks return to normal

The Masters, the men’s golf’s first major, in the Georgia spring, signals something of a return to “normal” in the world of sports this weekend. For more than a year, the entire planet has been turned upside down by Covid-19. There have been countless stories of tragedy and triumph, tales of poor and brilliant medical, social, economic and leadership issues throughout. Every person in the world has felt the impact of the pandemic in some way and no industry has been untouched.

Yet it feels as though the world of sport – from grassroots to the very top of the professional game – has been hardest hit.

Through every other global disaster, sport has somehow been an elixir for whatever ills befell us. But Covid-19 even took that away, albeit briefly at the sharp end, before sports emerged from a cave of lockdown into a new world – without fans. At least for pro athletes in almost every discipline, there was something to return to, some competition to resume, or a new tournament to tackle.

For most of the rest of the world, for whom sport is an escape from dreary lives and a vital part of mental and physical wellbeing, it took a lot longer to return to play.

This month in South Africa, schools and club rugby and football formally resumed for the first time since hard lockdown 13 months ago, meaning millions of participants could move away from distanced training and no games, back to competing against others.

Team sports at an amateur level have been particularly hard hit during a year of lockdown. Schoolchildren, particularly those with sporting aspirations, have been deeply scarred by the lost year.

Imagine the angst, disappointment and ultimately anger all the budding Craven and Grant Khomo Week rugby players had to work through because they missed their one chance at playing at that level.

Even the children who had worked their entire school careers to represent the first team in rugby, soccer, cricket, hockey, netball or rowing were affected. They had that ripped from them.

For many, cancelled sport was a mere disappointment, which they will overcome because, although it was important, it was not everything. But there were many pupils who only endured school because their chosen sport was what gave them meaning. And, in the school context, it defined their worth to themselves, their teachers and their peers.

I’ve spoken to several educators around the country who have relayed stories of top sports stars lashing out in other ways as they work through the grief as if it were the death of a close friend or relative.

Teachers have had to be mindful of the mental strain the lost sports year has had on children and they have had to be considered in their approaches because it has been the equivalent of bereavement for many school children.

Teachers and, above them, strong school senior leaders, have been vital in steering youngsters with broken dreams through this turmoil. Sport may be a pastime to most, but to many it is far deeper than that. The lost year will never return and, as a result, a small group of people may have missed their one shot at earning a junior pro contract, or making a breakthrough in an age group for which they are no longer eligible.

These small tragedies should not be underestimated. And it is simply another reason why I hope South Africans take Covid-19 seriously. A third wave and more lockdowns will ruin more dreams – and pile huge pressure on educators, coaches, parents, siblings and friends as they deal with the fallout of another lost dream, another shot at glory missed.

Covid-19 has spared no one. Ironically, as a disease, it affects the youth least in terms of their immediate health risks. But Covid-19’s real threat to younger people is that it has taken sport away from them.

It has robbed millions of kids of the health benefits of being active, but also the life lessons learnt playing sport, particularly – but not exclusively – in a team environment.

Education is a rounded cycle and sport offers lessons in discipline, time management, teamwork and organisation. You have to be at training at a certain hour, you have to meet set standards and your teammates rely on you, as you do on them.

Versions of these lessons exist outside of the sports arena, but nowhere are they as acute as on the sports field. The prospect of winning and losing, and learning to deal with those two extremes, is visceral and immediate in a sports contest.

So, seeing the blossoming azaleas around Augusta National this weekend as the world’s best golfers try to win a green jacket in front of fans after the eerie silence of last year, is a beacon of a new hope and a reminder of what has been lost.

The Masters in April is part of our sports fabric and lexicon and its return to the correct timeslot, under normal conditions, is a bud of hope that all sports, across the globe, will quickly bring back meaning to all our lives.

Imagine the angst and anger all the budding Craven and Grant Khomo Week rugby players had to work through because they missed their one chance

at playing at that level