Covid affecting Eureka High School

Eureka High School basketball used to be a very important part of the school and its culture, But ever since Covid-19 was discovered it has not been the same. After reading articles, talking to kids at Eureka high school that play sports, and intervening with the varsity basketball coach I now know a lot more about the effect covid-19 has had on basketball and other sports at Eureka High school.

During my research about covid affecting sports, I found an article that talked about it on a bigger scale. The article was about the NBA and how they handled Covid at its peak by going into an isolated bubble in Florida. Theundefeated.com said, ¨The NBA bubble provided an ideal setting to explore important questions about testing: data on thousands of individuals, detailed information on who they are, who they were in contact with, and other specifics.¨ In the article, they also said, ¨Nearing the end of the season, there have been no outbreaks of COVID-19 among NBA players, no interruptions since the bubble began. COVID-19 has been handled so thoroughly by the NBA that its largest COVID-related stories have involved individual behaviors that didn’t lead to any actual outbreaks, but potentially put others at risk. For instance, Houston Rockets forward Danuel House’s removal from the bubble for breaking bubble rules.¨ This shows just how effective the bubble tactic worked and what the league would do when a player disobeyed the rules and put others at risk with the virus.

In my interview with the head coach of boys varsity Jimmy Rodgers, I asked him some questions about the topic. The first question I asked was how has covid affected basketball this season? He responded by saying, ¨it affected us in a way that we had to reschedule games, League games, we lost 10 of our 12 players and we also lost out on the trip to Santa Rosa to play Cardinal Newman. We lost out a game against Trinity County and Hoopa, yeah we were down to three players last week and this week we're back pretty much full strength. at the time two guys s are still out with the 10th and 11th day of having covid.¨ From this one question you can tell how hard it was for coaches to manage everything and keep the program up and running with all the players being out and sick. Very easily other programs could have gotten overwhelmed and out of order but Eureka High handled it well and now our teams are almost back to full capacity.

The last season of basketball was very short because it was in the very middle of online school and covid so I asked Jimmy what the difference between last season and the seasons prior to it were. His answer was, ¨Last year was a short season. We really didn't get a chance to practice and get in practice time so it was a really quick season. I think it lasted for four weeks and we played 2 to 3 games a week. We did not travel we did not do any tournaments and it was just a super fast season my opinion is that we weren't prepared enough to win the league.¨ Even compared to this season where we have 20-30 games and multiple tournaments, last season was still very small and shortened.

I also talked to a couple of kids on the basketball team about what their thoughts were about the whole situation. One kid I talked with was Nelson. He told me that, ¨it is definitely more difficult with covid because of all the testing we have to go through during the week to be eligible to play. It is also hard with all the mask requirements because when we are playing basketball it really sucks to be wearing a mask the whole time.¨ Just last week spectators got shut down also so now no family or friends of any kind can watch our games. Even though all of these things are hard to deal with they are necessary for the season to remain open.

The JV boys basketball coach, Nate Thomas, is a first-year coach at Eureka High school so I thought it would be a good idea to ask him about his experience with Covid so far. He told me ¨I have head coaching jobs in the past with Winship and a couple of camps but this one has definitely been the hardest to manage. It gets really crazy sometimes when all of our guys are missing and gone with covid but I feel like we have done a pretty good job of keeping it under control and keeping everyone safe.¨ I really like Nate as a coach and my team and I all feel like he's done a good job with his first year.

Even with the shortened season last year and the tough year we are having this season we are very lucky. At the start of the pandemic, nobody knew anything about Covid and what it would do in sports and school. In a short amount of time, we have already gotten school back up and running and most sports are back to full speed. We have a lot of people to thank including all of the coaching staff for sports. Hopefully, in the near future, we can get back to 100% just like we were in the past.