Sports on hold for some young athletes in a summer marked by COVID-19
Lucy Schmitt stands poised at the end of a long trampoline. In quick succession, the 9-year-old does five backflips with remarkable speed and agility.
“Nice job, Lucy,” her gymnastics coach calls from the sidelines.
Lucy will be at this gym for four hours. That's on top of the eight additional hours she'll put in this week. It sounds like a grueling schedule, but not compared to the training she'd normally be doing if the pandemic hadn't upended her practice plans.
In a summer that’s anything but normal, Lucy is one of the many athletes across Minnesota who have modified how and when they practice their sport, or skip the season all together, to avoid getting and spreading the coronavirus.
Create a More Connected Minnesota
MPR News is your trusted resource for the news you need. With your support, MPR News brings accessible, courageous journalism and authentic conversation to everyone - free of paywalls and barriers. Your gift makes a difference.
Lucy is entering fifth grade, but she's talented enough to already be training for college, which typically means she's practicing four times a week.
After a long and lonely spring when the gym — and schools — were closed, Lucy said getting back to her passion has been a relief.
"It's not only about making it and making my teammates look good, but it's also about how my team is like a family to me,” she said.
Lucy said being away from her gym family was tough — and it was a big reason she came back to the gym when they were allowed to reopen in June.
It's a familiar risk-benefit calculation that athletes, their parents and their coaches have had to work through this summer: Competing comes with the risk of being exposed to coronavirus. But for kids passionate about sports, sitting out comes with the risk of losing skills - and the emotional cost of being isolated from beloved friends.
As of last week, the state Health Department had traced 351 coronavirus cases to middle-and-high school sports teams, though Kris Ehresmann, the state’s infectious disease director, said those cases aren't necessarily associated with actually playing the sport.
“The bigger transmission we’re seeing has to do with social events following a sporting event,” Ehresmann said. “In other words, a whole team goes to someone’s cabin for the weekend.”
More than 900 people who live with these athletes have had to quarantine as a result. According to the state, most clusters are among football teams and hockey teams.
With so many lingering questions around school reopenings and sports safety, the Minnesota State High School League has pushed its football and volleyball seasons to the spring.
At Lucy's gym, a modified practice schedule limits the number of people who are practicing at once. Gymnasts also no longer share chalk buckets, hand sanitizer is a must, locker room time has been dramatically restricted and everyone's temperature is taken at the door.
One thing missing from the equation: masks. Coaches and visitors here wear them, but the gymnasts don't because it's hard to compete in nearly any sport with one on.
Lucy's mom, Jessica Schmitt, said she's impressed with the safety measures the gym is taking. And there was never any question about whether Lucy would head back there this summer — not just because her daughter loves the sport, but also for her mental health.
When the gym closed in March, “she was feeling really successful, and on the way to being ready for the next competitive season,” Schmitt said. “And certainly for her, her main focus was missing her coaches and missing her friends."
In St. Louis Park, Jack Whelan, 13, said he misses his baseball teammates, too. When his school closed this spring, the baseball season went with it.
I've been playing since as long as I can remember. My dad taught me, so it's a family activity,” he said.”
And this was supposed to be Jack's first summer on the traveling team.
But at the same time Jack wanted to get back on the field and see his friends, he was also worried about putting his mom, Shawn Whelan, in danger.
She has a rare immune disorder that makes her particularly vulnerable to experiencing a severe case of COVID-19.
Whelan said she and her husband told Jack that they would support any decision he made about playing this summer.
Whelan said at one point, she suggested she move out so Jack could have a normal summer and, hopefully, fall school year, too.
Jack said he quickly rejected that idea.
"I think that would just make it less normal,” he said. “It would actually change things a lot more than if I didn't go to school in person. Because I'd still be going to school in person, but I wouldn't have a mom around."
Jack said he won't feel comfortable going back to the sport until everyone is wearing masks, which his teammates aren't doing.
And in the end, he says he's OK with skipping baseball this year to protect his mom.