Is Quarantining Affecting IHS Sports?

Indiana Area Senior High School

Is Quarantining Affecting IHS Sports?

By Addison Mosco

This year, quarantining has been a big issue. When you are exposed to COVID-19 you are not allowed to attend your sports practice. That has been affecting some of the sports teams and their games outcomes.

Not being able to play and practice gets you out of shape for your sport meaning, your skill level decreases. When it comes time to participate in a game, your skill is not as good as it was before if you can’t attend any practices.. That affects your whole team’s performance and the outcome of the game.

According to senior IHS Swimmer Loughlin Pagnucci, the swim team has not been greatly affected by quarantines. Though they had many quarantines, they did not affect the outcomes of their meets. Pagnucci states, “No-one is qurantintined right now, but a few weeks ago there was a case of COVID which required a few swimmers to be quarantined. We had no meets during that time, but many swimmers missed practices. I don’t think that it has affected the team. We have been having a successful season, which has continued. Hopefully we will not have any more cases before the end of the year with the Mark Hess Invitational and the WPIAL championship.”

When you play a sport that has everyone doing something at the same time, like dance, being quarantined can have a big impact on your performance. You have to be able to attend the practices to learn the routine and practice it. One dancer missing from the dance can mess up the whole thing. Junior Maycie Lorelli, a member of the IHS Dance Team, comments, “Thankfully no one on the dance team is quarantined right now. However, if the basketball team were to have a covid outbreak, it would affect us just as much because we dance at the games as well as come close to the basketball teams. If someone on the dance team were to get quarantined, this would interrupt formations and kicklines so we are staying as safe and covid friendly as possible!”

For some sports you need to have as many players as possible to be able to play efficiently, like basketball. You have a certain number of players on the court then some on the bench. When many students are quarantined from the basketball team, it can affect the whole outcome of games and practices. “Currently we do not have anyone quarantined however we have in the past. When we experienced some members of our team quarantining it was difficult to have a full practice since we were limited to a few players. We also had a game during that time period. We lost one of our starters and had very few players on the bench who were used to playing varsity. It is hard for it to not affect the team. With players who we typically rely on missing it puts different expectations on people that they are not used to.” Senior Girls Varsity Basketball player Hope Cook explains.

In cheerleading, it is also a big deal to have people quarantined. When you have multiple people getting sick and having to quarantine it can affect the whole routine. Sophomore Cheerleader Dakota Sparks comments, “Many of my teammates have been quarantined, but I don’t think any are at the moment. However, two of my teammates are sick and probably have COVID. When there aren’t enough people we can’t go to the games. We also can’t do anything during practice. It affects the outcomes of our routine because during practice if we can’t stunt we will forget everything we have to and it becomes dangerous.”

The overall consensus is that quarantines affect all sports in different ways, some affect the outcome more than others. It all depends on how the sport is played.

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