Reporter dad, athlete daughter feeling the fallout of pandemic
When my daughter was still in a stroller, I sometimes thought about the year she’d graduate from high school. Back in the early 2000s, it seemed so far away.
What would Sophia grow up to become? What would she be like at school?
So many thoughts, so many dreams, so much to watch unfold for a man who for years has written about high school athletes but never his own.
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has affected everyone, some far more severely than others. At my house, thankfully, we’re all OK. But the virus has changed the direction of my dreams as a parent and I am pretty sure my daughter’s dreams as a rising senior who plays water polo and swims -- even as officials announced Monday that high school sports in California for the upcoming academic year are delayed, not canceled, at this point.
SOPNIA >> As someone going into her final year of high school. I am heartbroken to face the possibility that I might not have a senior season.
You work so hard for three years looking forward to your final season and now there is a possibility that it might be taken away from you and other high school athletes because of a pandemic. Even though there are a lot more important things happening in our world compared to high school sports, it is still crushing to learn that the season has been pushed back and may never happen. bab >> March 13 was Sophia’s last day in a classroom before everything shut
down. A day earlier, the California Interscholastic Federation — the state’s governing body for high school athletics — pulled the plug on the state basketball championships scheduled for that weekend.
My daughter’s high school swim team had a meet that day. My wife, Brandi, and I skipped it and weren’t sure we made the right decision to allow our daughter to swim. We did — for her, if not for us.
“They honored the seniors on both teams,” she said when she got home, “because it might be our last meet.”
The other day she told me something else that landed heavy on my heart.
“Dad,” she said, “do you realize we might be the first class at my school not to have a prom junior and senior year?”
SOPHIA >> For the past few months, everything has been up in the air, a stressful experience waiting for news about everything school-related, including sports. Even now, with the season dates out, there is still a possibility that sports can get canceled because nobody knows what the world will be like in a couple of months.
DAD>> I hope that swim meet in March wasn’t the last sports competition of my daughter’s high school career, just as I hope a winter Sunday at St. Mary’s High School in Stockton wasn’t the last time I’ll see her play water polo.
Monday, shortly after making his announcement that the fall sports season would be delayed, Ron Nocetti, the CIF’S executive director, asked about my daughter. His daughter also plays water polo, and he too was at St. Mary’s High School in Stockton that Sunday in late January to watch his daughter play.
He and I were talking when my daughter ran up to us to share horrific news that Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter crash. I’ll never forget that moment, a frozen snapshot on a cold and gray morning. This terrible year began with news about Kobe.
DAD>> I have watched my kid swim in meets since the summer after her kindergarten year. Too many bleary-eyed Saturday mornings to count. So many meets lounging near a pool waiting for those few precious seconds that my daughter was actually in the water.
In recent years, she took a stronger liking to water polo, a sport I knew little about but was quickly hooked. Of course, it helps when your kid scores five goals in her first game as a freshman. She worked her way up to varsity as a sophomore and was part of a North Coast Section playoff qualifier as a junior. With the core group from that team back this school year, expectations are pretty high. A league championship and perhaps even a deep NCS playoff run might be in be cards — if there is a season.
As my wife, daughter and I have spent more time together these past four months than maybe the previous four years combined — a product of being home, a lot — we have gone through the gamut of possibilities.
Has my daughter already had her last in-person high school class? (Her district announced this month that it will start with distance learning.) Will graduation for the Class of 2021 be as it was for the Class of 2020 be like this year’s, a drive-through ceremony?
Will she have a Junior Olympic club water polo tournament? (Postponed this summer, rescheduled for the winter.)
And will that core group on her high school water polo team have one last season together? SOPHIA >> I, along with many other students, have already received the devastating news that senior year will start completely online, and many other senior events have been canceled. I understand that the health and safety of students come first, but it still hurts that more and more activities are uncertain to happen.
Prom and Powder Puff (juniors vs. seniors girls football game) were canceled this past spring. Same with the majority of the 2020 swim season. Traditionally at my school, senior year begins with a Sunrise gettogether and a picnic at a water park.
Both are unlikely to happen for my class. DAD>> My wife and I had a thought. Would Sophia maybe want to skip this school year and come back next year — she’s on the younger side of her class. We were mostly joking and hadn’t even checked to see if school officials would allow it.
But we threw it out there one day, just as a thought.
Her answer: “Absolutely not!”
The CIF news last week about fall sports, including water polo, being delayed until winter gave us and other families with high school athletes hope. And given all that we have experienced these past four months, that’s exactly what we need.
Hope that it will get better, that there will be a season and that maybe — just maybe — it’s OK to dream again.