The coronavirus outbreak has brought the world of sports to a halt. The entire country along with its athletes has been forced in doors and waits for the day the government says “all clear.”
As the days in quarantine add up, athletes lose precious practice time with their team. For Fall sports, offseason only means no games. It is a time to prepare for the upcoming season both by training in the weight room and building a culture.
This shut down means sports such as football, volleyball and men’s and women’s soccer are losing valuable time.
I talked with Abi Hume, sophomore forward for Azusa Pacific women’s soccer, and Vince Rollins, junior defensive lineman for APU football, about how they’re striving to get better during this time of separation from their teammates and coaches
Question: How has Covid -19 impacted your daily lives as athletes?
Vince: “Initially it was just classes moved online, then it was limited practice time, next thing we knew everything was being shut down. That was huge because at the time we were getting ready to go into spring football and we were lifting everyday as a group. So, this really threw off everyone’s entire schedule.”
Abi: “Spring is highly focused on development. It’s where all the pressure of conference is taken away and you get to focus on yourself as a player. So to have that taken away is very difficult.”
Question: How have you gotten creative with your workout routines?
Vince: “We’ve been creative by trying to be more competitive with each other. Coaches have had to take their foot off the peddle with how controlling they can be with our training because we’re all at home. So, it’s turned into home competitions where guys have been making weights out of cement and buckets with coals. It all comes down to what you have available to you … Our strength and conditioning coach has been gracious enough to let us borrow some equipment to take home. He’s also giving us personalized workouts to do with what we have or just body weight.”
Abi: “Our trainer Nate [Nasca] has been sending us workouts for us to do at home without equipment because none of us have any. As a team, we all downloaded the Nike Training app. It’s filled with so many different workouts that were meant to be done at home. So, in our group chat we’ve been sending workouts we think are hard. So that’s a way we’ve all stayed connected.”
Question: How have your coaches been able to encourage and motivate you during this time?
Vince: “They’ve organized groups within us to keep us communicating and talking everyday as if we were all still together. We also have bible studies that we’ll have with coaches one or two days out of the week … We are really encouraged by our coaches to group activities together electronically so we can keep bonding.”
Abi: “We’ve had a couple team Zoom meetings. We don’t even really talk about Soccer. It’s more to check in and see how everyone is doing during this time. We also have a thing called Fight Partners. Each week we are assigned another player on the team and during that week we are encouraged to be texting, face-timing and sharing workouts. I like it a lot because it forces us to stay connected.”
Question: What are you hoping to take away from this experience?
Vince: “I feel like there’s two main things I can take away from this. First, it’s given us perspective as student athletes. We’ve had to look at where we find our identity, and what we feel is really important in life … Second, it teaches us about adversity and really valuing what we have as student athletes. It’s a blessing to play our sports when we can.”
Abi: “As an athlete I hope to not take my sport for granted … Or even exercise for granted. It’s so easy to not want to go to practice or that hour meeting with your team. This time has really shown me how meaningful and life-giving it is to me … My athletic career is on a clock. I’m not going to have it forever. Now, I know how it feels to not have it so I will take advantage of the two or three years I have left to be an athlete.
The Beat @APU 