What a time for College Sports

By Mitchell Hagenson, Staff Writer

This past year has been crazy for all college students worldwide. Many college students were excited for things like getting the chance to meet new people, seeing old college friends, or even just looking forward to completing the program they wanted to go for college. However, due to what’s going in our world with the corona virus, many students worldwide have had to deal with things like wearing face masks, social distancing, and online classes. If we were to talk about a certain group of college students that have had an interesting college experience so far, it would be the college students who are doing sports this year. For the athletes at Iowa Lakes, this year’s seasons are in for something different. Troy Larson, who is the Athletics Director/Head Coach for the Iowa Lakes Men’s basketball team talked about how COVID-19 has impacted not just the men’s basketball’s team, but all Iowa Lakes athletics so far.

“Well it’s definitely been interesting with the corona virus around,” said Larson. “If you look at sports at the highest level like the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, I mean obviously the sports the were in season or getting ready to begin their seasons when last March when the virus first came into our country, it had a tremendous effect, because those seasons were shut down and none of us could do anything for a long period of time and I think you’ve just seen a trickle down effect from that with college sports at the highest level and then down to small colleges and community colleges. I mean it’s definitely had a huge impact on all of us,” said Larson.

“Here at Iowa Lakes we weren’t able to participate in our spring sport seasons,” said Larson. “Baseball, softball, men’s and women’s golf, they worked hard all year long. It was getting to the point where they just played a few games and then was starting to play a few games and then just got shut down, but the good thing for all of those student athletes is from at least the spring sports that were effected is that they all were granted a waver or a additional year of competition, so if they chose to even if you were a senior or at a community college level a sophomore, you can return for a third year or a fifth year at the highest level and still play, so the NCJA which is what we are under, and the NCCA at least took care of those athletes. Overall it was still a tremendous impact overall of the college sports,” said Larson.

Gabby West who is a current sophomore and a member of the Iowa Lakes softball team would talk about how her experience with the corona virus so far and how’s impacted for her and her team this year.

“It sucks that the corona virus had to shut down all of the spring sports for all of us at the college last year,” said West. “Last year it sent us home after having us only play six games, and it has reduced us to only playing two scrimmages this fall. Last year, the corona virus sent me home last year, so I missed out on nearly all of my freshman year of softball, this year I’m hoping that we’ll stay long enough, so I’m able to finish out my softball career,” said West.

West would continue to talk about what their is to expect when it comes preparing themselves for this year’s softball season.

“We’re taking everything a day at a time at this point,” said West. “Our team this year is required to do a 10 day quarantine and we’re slowly being introduced back into the student body. Even though each of us are getting use to the corona virus in our own ways, we all are in this together. Our hard work as a team will pay off,” said West.

West would continue to talk about what makes this year‘s softball season so important than last year‘s softball season for her and her team.

“For me personally, it would be the fact that it’s my final year of softball,” said West. “I don’t have plans to continue playing, so I would love to get through this season smoothly. Softball helps ease the stress of the corona virus and everything it’s brought with it, so for us to get another chance to play the sport we love this year to make up for what happened last year is going to be something special. We are going to pick up where left off, this time stronger and hungrier,” said West.

Larson would then continue to talk about what basketball means to him and his team during these hard times.

“I think that it is really important that for us as a coaching staff to understand that it’s just not the same,” said Larson.” Sometimes we are fearful that we not able to provide quite the experience that we normally provide these student athletes, because of all of the regulations and rules that are required for the colleges, but on the flip side of things, when you think of all of the guys that were here from like March 15th till like the middle of June were completely shut down. They’re was nothing open, we were completely shut down, and then even until till like June until they got here, you were looking at maybe gyms being open, maybe not, weight rooms being open, maybe not. Picture this, whatever you love to do the most in your life, you can’t do for a long period of time, so even though it’s maybe not the same, for our student athletes, because of all of our hard work, all of the protocols that we haven’t placed, and especially the efforts they put in, they are able to train and do what they love to do,” said Larson.

“So you ask me what does it mean to them and what does it mean to me? It means everything,” said Larson. It means that we are able to do something that we love to do and that’s why we are willing work hard and spend the extra time and sit in meetings on how to be safe. It just means lot to me especially seeing the joy on the players face knowing that they are able to play the sport the love again. “

As you can see there is a lot of interesting things to look forward to this year’s sport seasons. To talk about what’s next for the softball season, Gabby West stated that they don’t have any fall games this year, but they having are having 2 scrimmages this year. The first one will be September 19th in Creston, Iowa versus SWICC. For the Basketball season, however, Troy Larson stated that they haven’t come up with a date for the first game of the season for men’s basketball, but he did stated that it will be sometime in January. This is going to be very interesting time for these sport seasons, all we can do is sit back and enjoy what we got for college sports during these interesting times.