Buckle up – we’re still in for a long pandemic ride in 2021

Circuits like the SFU18AAAHL are in a holding pattern.

We’re only nine days into the new year, but it already feels like the bloom has come off the 2021 rose.

When the calendar changed from 2020 to 2021, there seemed to be big celebrations among the general public and high hopes with a symbolic new beginning. Most couldn’t wait for the year 2020 to be over.

Of course, 2020 will always be the year that will be associated with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that saw massive restrictions and lockdowns take place all over the world. That resulted in numerous annual events getting canceled along with special festivities like weddings.

Along with the cancellations, annual events like high school graduations didn’t occur in traditional fashion. The sports world was thrown into havoc with seasons being cancelled, while some sports played modified seasons.

North America got caught firmly in the grips of the coronavirus on March 11, 2020, when the NBA elected to pause its season and domino effect of shutdowns began to occur in all walks of life.

Due to the upheaval created by the COVID-19 pandemic, most could wait to kiss 2020 goodbye.

A stick tape job to cover an event in a pandemic.

The only problem was the pandemic didn’t go away when the calendar flipped over to 2021. As the days go on, it seems like the people who test positive for COVID-19 are starting to become more and more people I know.

Vaccines for COVID-19 started to roll out in December of 2020, but the rollout is still a long way away from returning society to a pre-pandemic state.

When vaccines appeared, it seemed to be a realistic optimistic expectation that things might return to normal by September of this year.

With that said, there were media reports this week that vaccination of the general population in Alberta and Saskatchewan might not start until September of 2021.

According to Worldometer over the last three days, the United States had a 24-hour period where it experienced 279,204 new COVID-19 cases and 4,245 deaths due to COVID-19 and a following 24-hour period that saw 307,579 new COVID-19 cases and 4,010 deaths due to COVID-19.

In Saskatchewan, there were still 3,186 active COVID-19 cases as of Saturday. Alberta still had 14,437 active COVID-19 cases on Saturday and detected Canada’s first case of the South African variant of COVID-19.

On Thursday, Alberta announced its tight COVID-19 restrictions would stay in place until Jan. 21, and British Columbia extended its gathering restrictions until Feb. 5.

Over the first nine days of 2021, there has been so much noise coming on the COVID-19 front that it still feels like 2020.

A house decorated for Christmas in Saskatoon.

Despite the pandemic, good feelings from the Christmas holiday season in 2020 did come into existence, but it feels like those happy holiday feelings are already long gone.

Besides the noise around the COVID-19 pandemic, we haven’t even gotten into the coup insurrection attempt that happened in the United States on Wednesday, when supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

Before the calendar flipped from 2020 to 2021, any realist would know that 2021 was going to be far from a normal year. It is already playing out as being far from a normal year.

People all over the world are still going to have to navigate the daily noise that has occurred for almost the last 10 months during the COVID-19 pandemic possibly through the entire calendar year of 2021.

The challenge seems to get tougher and tougher for individuals to focus on what they can control and try not to go overboard emotionally with the news that comes out on a daily basis. People are still going to have to self-regulate the amount of time they spend consuming the news or the seemingly continuous toxicity that occurs on social media.

In the sports world, you can expect constant changes and will likely continue to see governance decisions that have no consistency.

The NFL is in playoffs, the NBA has started a regular season and the NHL is slated to begin a regular season this coming Wednesday on Jan. 13.

A classic movie viewing during the pandemic.

In the United States, some NCAA sports have resumed including regular season action involving the University of Wisconsin Badgers women’s hockey that features Saskatoon sisters in forwards Sophie and Grace Shirley. Both are alums of the Saskatoon Stars female under-18 AAA hockey team.

The Badgers were only able to play two regular season games before Christmas due to positive COVID-19 tests on the team.

In Canada, most sports have been mothballed unless you play NHL hockey. In Saskatchewan, sports teams and groups can conduct training in groups of eight, but there are provinces that have been shut down on that front all together.

This past week in Saskatchewan both the 53^rd Bedford Road Invitational Tournament in Saskatoon and the 69^th Luther Invitational Tournament in Regina have been cancelled for 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Both are extremely prestigious events on the high school basketball calendar in Saskatchewan.

Late Friday night, the WHL announced a renewed commitment to play the 2020-21 campaign with each club playing 24 games. A new start date still hasn’t been announced for the season.

The start date for the 2020-21 WHL campaign has already been pushed back a handful of times.

There has been speculation in hockey circles that major junior and junior A leagues might be willing to push campaigns back to the point games will be played in June or July in order to get playoff champions crowned.

Each WHL team hopes to play a 24 game regular season.

Who knows how well that will go over as there could potentially be huge season creep with spring and summer sports like baseball, golf, softball and soccer. That just scratches the surface with sports schedule conflicts that could happen, and there are a number of other sports that get going in spring and summer.

There has also been speculation that all hockey seasons in Canada that aren’t NHL campaigns might not ultimately continue their 2020-21 campaigns.

For myself, I covered two Saskatchewan Female Under-18 AAA Hockey League games this past November. Those are the only two live hockey games I’ve covered since March 12, 2020.

Going forward, I will continue to try let things develop as they develop without putting any expectations on them. Whenever sports do get going again, I will start feeling my way through when it comes to covering or just being involved with events again.

I was in the process of doing that with the two SFU18AAAHL games I got out to this past November before the season got halted.

As hard as it is, I will try not to immediately act emotionally to how events evolve around me. I find for myself dealing with others acting out emotionally to evolving events makes it harder to take things as they are.

I hope those in society will try and take deep breaths before reacting to how the world unfolds moment by moment.

Me pictured at the Art Hauser Centre on Nov. 21, 2020.

I have also accepted people in general are selfish. In general, most in society expect the world to bend to their selfish needs. I also have to remember that humanity as a collective never learns from past mistakes.

However the cards get dealt my way, I just have to play them the best I can and hope one or two others do the same.

If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

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