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2021-08-11
There is No Good Decision
My daughter is very athletic. I don’t make that statement lightly. I do not lie and I will look you in the eye and tell you my son is not an athlete. But my daughter was born with a natural ability for sports. Anything she tries, even recreationally, she excels at. When she was 3, she began gymnastics and in first grade, she joined the competitive team. It’s not just that she’s athletic, she works extremely hard. So making her sit out an entire season due to COVID was not an easy decision. I do not regret it, but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard. When this season began in May, we cautiously allowed her to return, fully masked. The cases were down and the coaches wore masks. We decided the risk was worth it for her mental health. Then the COVID restrictions were lifted June 15. My daughter became the only one in the full gym with a mask. We hoped for the best and have been lucky so far. But the cases are exploding. They are higher now than this time last year. What do we do? All her friends are from the gym. Truly. She doesn’t have any close friends at school because most of her time is spent at the gym. Can we take that away from her again? She worked out every single day of quarantine to stay in shape and she did. Can we look at her and basically say her work was for nothing? There is no good choice. What is more important? Protecting her physically or giving her the part of her life that secures her mental health? At the end of last week, I was seriously considering pulling her as the daily cases rose to 1,000+. However, in a move that shocked me knowing the clientele and position of the gym on this entire pandemic, even her gym has reinstated masks for all coaches. This made me feel maybe 5% better. Her one on one session is also from 8 - 9pm, which I was bummed at at first - so late for a kid! But I quickly realized we’re the only ones in the gym that late, which lowers my anxiety a bit. So we’re going to take the risk for now and allow her to continue going. I just hope it’s not a decision we regret. -
2021-03-27
Running Masked Up: Six Navajo Nation Athletes Earn All-State Accolades
By Quentin Jodie | Mar 27, 2021 | Track & Field | Navajo Times | Sharon Chischilly Kirtland Central junior Aisha Ramone places third overall in the 4A girls’ cross-country state championships on Friday at Albuquerque Academy. ALBUQUERQUE It’s been a long time coming for the Tohatchi boys’ cross-country team. On Friday, the Cougars placed four runners in the top 20 at the New Mexico Class 3A state cross-country meet as they secured the second-place trophy. “It’s been a while since we took one of these home,” Tohatchi coach Fern Spencer said of the red trophy. The longtime coach is not sure when was the last time they brought home a state trophy in cross-country but she said it was well deserved. “It’s very good for the program,” she said when asked if the state runner-up trophy is a nice addition to the trophy case. “They’re all young so we have another year with them. We’re going to continue to work hard and keep improving.” The Cougars were not the only school to take home hardware as six athletes earned All-State honors. In the 4A girls’ race, Kirtland Central’s Aisha Ramone and Shiprock’s Kaydence Platero placed third and fourth, respectively. “Finishing in the top three was my main goal and I got it,” Ramone said, who finished the 5K race in 19:47.77. “I just felt like I could have stayed up with the Albuquerque Academy runner (Emma Patton) but I just didn’t dig deep down enough to finish second.” Nonetheless, the KC runner was happy that she improved from last season’s sixth place finish at state. Platero was another runner who saw improvements from last year as she jumped four spots to fourth this year. “I’m so happy that I made the top five,” Platero said. “This is a big morale boost for me because I didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself but my team, my coach and the whole town of Shiprock cheered me on.” Platero, who was clocked in at 20:00.26, said her game plan worked to near perfection as she tried to shadow Ramone. “I tried to hang with Aisha and I tried to execute that but they did take off,” she said. “But in the end I was still able to finish behind them.” With a team score of 83 points, the Aztec Lady Tigers placed fourth while Shiprock took fifth with 94 points. In the 4A boys, Miyamura’s Tayan Benson made the podium with a 10th place finish. “I was hoping to do better than last year, but I just couldn’t do that today,” the Miyamura junior said. In the team standings, the Shiprock Chieftains placed fourth while Miyamura took sixth. In the 3A boys’ race, Albuquerque Cottonwood Classical ran away with the state title with 14 points while the Cougars finished with 47 points. Tohatchi was led by Nicolas Yazzie as he placed 10th overall. “It means a lot to us,” Yazzie said. “We all come in every day to practice and we give it our all. It just led to this moment and I think the time and effort we put into this paid off. I couldn’t have done it without them.” In addition to Yazzie, the Cougars had Melvin Scott Jr. place 14th, Jimmie Chavez III 17th and Jared Peterson 20th to complete the team score. Tohatchi’s fifth runner, Rodney Joe placed 30th overall. Individually, Crownpoint’s Tylon Tsosie and Newcomb’s Damien Johnson were named to the 3A All-State team by placing in the top 10. Tsosie took seventh, one spot ahead of Johnson. In the 1A/2A meet, the Ramah girls and Rehoboth boys took fifth in their respective races. -
2021-02-17
A College Athlete's Pandemic
The story I uploaded explains how the Covid-19 pandemic has changed my experience as a college athlete. This is important to me because playing a sport in college is a huge part of my overall college experience. -
2020-12-16
Suffolk Masks
Everyone has a mask these days and they are all so unique or plain. Suffolk created their own mask along with a few other styles that students could buy. It is easier to recognize suffolk students when wearing these masks. It is cool to see Suffolk step up and be a part of the pandemic and create new things for their students. Us athletes got a separate mask, seen in the second photo, it is called a gaitor. A lot of the athletes would wear them walking or at practice/in the gym. It separates the athletes from the regular students. Suffolk wanted to be a part of this history so they created these masks. These objects are important to Suffolk’s history through the pandemic and how they chose to help their students out. This is also significant in the year 2020 because everyone was designing their own masks and it was cool to see how all of the colleges and universities came together to create their own masks and contribute to today’s history. -
2020-12-16
Some College Athletes are Marginalized?
This search really opened my eyes to all of the colleges that are not division I and how they are marginalized. I read an article from the ncaa explaining all of the covid guidelines and regulations regarding all of the different schools. Division I schools are still allowed to play but it was postponed due to Covid rather than lower division schools' seasons getting cancelled and their championships. All of the hard work that athletes train for and they don’t get to show how they’ve grown but division I athletes get to go further with their passion for sports. This is important to me because my team is directly related to this topic of not being able to play and having everything still up in the air while division I schools are allowed to participate. This is important to archivists showing the discrepancies regarding different level school along with the sports that are allowed to play. -
2020-12-16
Suffolk Softball During The Pandemic
These photos were taken during the pandemic at our practices. As you can see, we are all wearing masks in the photo along with there only being a few of us in each of them. This really shows the differences between before and after Covid. There are no pictures of team events because we weren’t allowed to do anything with more than 10 people so we were on zoom a lot of the time for meetings and team things like study hall. This was a hard time for all of us and not being together through it all, a few people quit and stayed home so it was extremely different from times before everything happened. It was difficult to keep the mask on and breathing was quite hard as well, we took many socially distanced breaks to get a drink and pull our masks down for a minute or so. This is important to understand how different sports were throughout before the pandemic versus while we are in it and trying to figure out different solutions to problems. Every team had to go through the same thing we did with masks and social distancing and cleaning properly but it just adds to more about Suffolk Softball and how captured the moments throughout the pandemic which is important to archives. -
2020-12-16
Finding out our Season was Cancelled
All of these photos were taken after our last game of the trip along with the last of our season. We found out our season was cancelled the day before and our coaches planned all of this in a day. Also two of our coaches who stayed in Boston flew all the way down to Florida to watch our last day of games and experience it all with us. It was crazy and overwhelming. The game before the last one got cut short because the other team’s coach got a call from their school saying they need to come back immediately because of Covid. This is when we knew it was real and it was over for real. It was a lot of sadness and the seniors did not want to go out like that. Every single senior athlete went through this same thing at every college and high school, all around the country. These photos give the viewer a personal aspect of Suffolk softball and how we dealt with it along with some words that our coach wrote in one of the Instagam posts. It allows historians to look back at how the pandemic affected athletes and maybe compare Suffolk softball to other schools and look at the timeline of before, finding out, and during the pandemic. These images are important to this archive because it is directly related with what is going on today and if people wanted to learn about this then there should be some sort of information on it because there are very little personal stories about athletics. -
10/24/2020
Julian Dziuda Oral History, 2020/10/24
This is an interview with Julian Dziuda. He is a student athlete (soccer) with St. Mary's University. -
2020-09-22
Professional Sports in a Pandemic
Professional sports have been a way for our nation to heal in the face of tragedy. It has given us a distraction from the everyday struggles and misfortunes. But this time is different, with a virus that's easily transmitted and unknowingly spread we face a problem we never thought we'd face. The ethics of continuing sports became unclear and the athletes safety was in the balance. Putting ourselves in their shoes is difficult when we look to sports as an escape from life in involuntary seclusion.