When sports ended

It was unreal. I honestly didn’t know what to do with myself. Sports are my life. Then, a couple of days after covering the final DMACC Bears baseball game, it all came to a halt. 

It was one thing after another. The men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments, the NBA suspended, baseball suspended, including the DMACC softball and baseball, and countless others. 

In the matter of days every sport was off the air. I would drive every morning to school or to work listening to 1460 KXNO, Iowa’s sports radio station, and yet the sports world fell silent. 

I remember calling my dad when it was announced that there will be no March Madness this year and it was then when it really hit, because my dad just replied with, “So now what are we gonna do.” I had no answer. Since I can remember my dad and I had our tradition of drinking Mcdonald’s Shamrock Shakes while we discuss every game, filling out our brackets. It was something that we looked forward to every year and just like that it was gone. During this time it made me reflect just how sports have made me into the person I am today.

I had to get used to the first few days of no sports. I would still open up my phone and go straight to the ESPN app in hopes of seeing highlights of the games the night before, but all I got was the reminder that baseball is pushing its season further back into April. 

Now, I won’t lie, I definitely watched reruns of Seahawks games just to have some sort of sporting event on. It is just nice to feel like there are games still to be played. 

As I drive by the empty parking lots in the little league fields, I realize that I miss how sports connected families. You could be at a game with people you have never met and with one score you could be high-fiving and cheering like you had known each other for years. 

Soon this will just be a part of our history and we can go back to checking our phones for scores, watching live games instead of reruns, and connecting with fans. 

 

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