Like many “normal” things in 2020, sports at H-F was an uncertainty. That being said, no one really knew if student-athletes would be able to participate in sports at all this school year. For students, especially seniors, this was a hard reality to face considering some had their season cut short last year.

It was announced that a few traditional fall sports would be pushed back to the spring and certain sports like basketball, football and wrestling were in jeopardy of being cancelled entirely. It was an interesting situation; no one knew which sports were going to be able to be easily covered – especially from a remote setting. 

In previous years covering sports, I was actually able to attend games and events at H-F and get interviews after the conclusion of those events. Yet, this year, since no fans were able to attend it was very difficult to thoroughly cover games, whether that be through interviews or actually watching the games. I had to rely almost solely on email interviews, and hope the responses I received fit into the article I was working on. 

In the fall I was able to cover multiple sports such as girls cross country, golf, swimming, and tennis, and the boys cross country and golf team, which I thought was very important for the H-F community since no fans were able to attend any of the events.

Mr. Lyke, the new athletic director at HF, helped out in a few of my sports stories. I was able to get his perspective as the new athletic director as well as kept me in the loop on schedule updates so that I could report to the community.

This spring, I was able to cover the girls gymnastics team after it was announced that multiple postponed sports due to COVID-19 would resume.  I was able to relay the schedules for these sports to the community to encourage involvement and support for our HF athletes.

Writing about HF sports this year has been more challenging than ever before. Faced with limited in person opportunities, interviews were difficult to obtain and those that were conducted were far less personal than if they had been done in person. 

Despite the challenges this year, I was able to grow as a writer and tackle the challenges in sports writing that COVID-19 brought. We have all grown in the past year and should be proud of the progress and accomplishments we have made, no matter how little they may feel.