#LostSeasons
Just as spring athletes were gearing up for their seasons, a global pandemic cut them short. Athletes (and their fans) at all levels (professional, college, high school, club, and recreational) found themselves trained and ready to play, but without the ability to compete.
How are you making sense of the experience of losing this sports season? After dreaming and planning and working at their craft for years, athletes at all levels suddenly found that their season was gone. Some might have been in the best shape of their lives, others might secretly and guiltily feeling grateful for more time to recover from injury. Some might have recently to forgo their final year of eligibility to graduate and move on-- making the difficult calculation that it would have been too much to extend out academics to return for that last season. All are likely experiencing ebbs and flows in the motivation to keep training at the highest level, day in and day out, with no specific goal, or hazy ones at best. Our hope is that contributing to the project will serve as an exercise to deal with the tough stuff and opportunity to process, emote, and heal. Athletes are so great -- the best -- at tuning out distractions, turning off negative thoughts, redirecting to the positive, and making the most of things. But that is often in "normal" times when we have a clear sense of what the future holds and can plan for upcoming competitions. And in this atypical moment, many of the things we turn to when we need support aren't available to us-- mainly, playing our sport which we love, with our teammates whom we love.
So we'd like to hear your stories. Share you your stories with the Journal of the Plague Year. We will capture, curate, and archive them. We will share them with the world, so that the many people who look up to and learn from young athletes, can draw strength from your experiences and stories -- the good parts, the challenging parts, and everything in between -- of your lost season and the pandemic.
Alternately, share your story by directing it to us at our Facebook Page, to @covid19archive1 on Twitter, or to @covid19archive1 on Instagram. Be sure to include the hashtag #lostseasons for all your posts.
If you have questions contact our #lostseasons team captain, Victoria Jackson, an athlete and a scholar!