Monday 1 February 2021

Sports world needs to continue to keep grinding

Motivation gets tougher as COVID-19 pandemic continues

A Prince Albert Raiders goal celebration from May 2019.
“Trust the process.”

For the majority of the sports world seemingly all over the world, that tried and true cliché seems to get harder and harder to follow.

As February of 2021 starts today, North America is just a short time away from observing the one-year anniversary of falling into the grips of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In North America, the various shutdowns, restrictions and lockdowns had their start on March 11, 2020 when the NBA elected that day to pause its 2019-20 season.

That started the domino effect of various shutdowns, restrictions and lockdowns that continue to this day. Different parts of the world have already or are about to experience their respective one-year anniversaries of falling in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic between now and March 11, 2021.

In Canada, it seems all the sports world can do is keep plugging along with plans to play or resume action. Administrators and staffers will have to continue to keep drawing up and redrawing up plans to get back into action.

Coaches have to keep doing their best to plan for whatever a season may look like.

Athletes have to keep training attempting to prepare like a season could be around the corner.

Here in Saskatchewan at the moment, groups of athletes can practice in a team environment limited to groups of eight, if they are age 18 or under.

The Prince Albert Northern Bears last played Nov. 21, 2020.
The rest have to do their best to continue training individually to keep up their conditioning.

As the pandemic keeps dragging on, the longer the sports world goes without the return of regular competitions it gets harder and harder to keep the motivation up to continue on.

At this point in time in Canada if you are involved in sports in any way, you have likely asked yourself, “Why do I keep doing this?”

That goes for administrators, staffers, coaches and athletes across the board including if you play minor sports at the novice level, at the highest level in an age group or are playing in elite leagues like the WHL, CJFL, WWCFL, U Sports and the CFL.

As seasons keep getting pushed back and events get cancelled, you start to wonder what the point is.

In some circuits like the SFU18AAAHL, the SMAAAHL and the SJHL, teams got to experience regular season game action for a short time only to have the rug pulled out from under them. All of those circuits haven’t seen the ice for competitive games since late November 2020.

For the high performance athletes in Canada, you hit the point where you are lost.

These days once you reach Grade 9, high performance athletes in Canada mostly specialize in only one sport of choice.

About 20 years ago, that was the last era where top level athletes might play three or four sports throughout the year at a high level. Shortly after that point, year round sports specific training took off.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders last player in November of 2019.
Most in the general public believe the era from 20 years ago still exists, but that is far from the case.

High performance athletes commit to their sports like year-round 40-hour a week jobs. It does become a lifestyle.

As a result of this singular focus, high performance athletes don’t really dabble in other interests. You don’t pick up interests like playing musical instruments like a guitar, doing photography, dabbling in various artistic pursuits or even following a series on television.

When games and sport aren’t there, it does leave a hole and effects mental health.

Of course, there was optimism in December of 2020 when news arrived that vaccines were going to be rolled out for COVID-19. With that said, vaccine rollout takes time, and judging by the stories from mainstream media outlets, there appears to be some rollout delays as far as Canada is concerned.

There are stories of new variants of COVID-19, which adds another hurdle in the pandemic situation.

Like in society, the sports community has been wedged due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

You have people who believe playing sports outweighs the needs of the pandemic. You have others who believe the needs of the pandemic outweigh playing sports.

A third group also believes you have to put your best foot forward to get the sports world back into action, but if the health officials say you can’t go, you respect and follow the decisions of the health officials.

Outdoor sports like softball motored in Sask. in 2020.
Of course, some that are in the group that believe playing sports outweighs the needs of the pandemic get testy with people in the other two groups.

Patience is in short supply, but is it something that is needed.

 It is known that the virus does transmit easily, which is a big fear as far as health officials go. 

Worries of filling hospitals too fast continue to be there.

In the sports world, it seems as far as Saskatchewan was concerned that sports that were played outside in summer and fall weren’t as disrupted as when everything moved indoors when winter hit.

In summer, there was a panic if Saskatchewan hit 300 active cases. 

On Sunday, there were 2,534 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, and there have been many days over the past two months where the active case count was over 3,000.

There is also still a real worry that COVID-19 is a “gain of function” experiment gone wrong. That theory has never been fully discounted.

In a “gain of function” experiment, a researcher takes a virus and makes it a superbug in a lab. The researcher proceeds to develop medical defences against this superbug.

It is viewed this type of research keeps humans one step ahead of nature. There are critics against this type of research, who often ask what happens if one of these superbugs escapes the lab?

Chase Wouters plays for the Saskatoon Blades on March 6, 2020.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology lab in the Jiangxia District, Wuhan, in China’s central Hubei province was working on “gain of function” type experiments. It is speculated COVID-19 escaped the lab in Wuhan, but it is highly likely the truth might never come out on that front.

That theory does help make all the shutdowns, restrictions and lockdowns that have happened around the world make sense.

For anyone involved in the sports world, all you can do is focus on controlling what you can control and administrators, staffers, coaches and athletes are all in the same boat.

All you can do is continue to put your best foot forward each day, have patience and “trust the process.”

Words of wisdom from Huskies’ Piok

Yol Piok in action for the Huskies in 2019.
Yol Piok, who is a sure handed receiver with the University of Saskatchewan Huskies football team, shared some pretty good words of wisdom on Bell Let’s Talk day this past Thursday.

Piok, who has used up four seasons of U Sports eligibility with the Huskies, has had his battle with mental health over the years dealing with severe anxiety.

The graduate of Regina’s Archbishop M.C. O’Neill High School has made huge strides in his mental health journey over the years. He has become an ambassador when it comes to speaking on the subject.

He put together a great video message that was just under one minute in length that was shared on all the Huskies social media channels. In a calming way, he talked patience as well as saying other calming words.

The video, which is below, is a good one to reflect on as time marches on.

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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