COVID-19 Rules With Sports

COVID-19+Rules+With+Sports

Erin McIntyre

The Coronavirus has impacted everyones day to day life in some way, whether it’s you’re working at home, or not being able to go into school. Student athletes have had a hard time with the new lifestyle based off of all the new rules given by the MIAA. This Association made it mandatory to wear a mask at all times during a sporting event, whether you’re watching or playing and to have no contact. These new rules are hard for any team but especially hard for the soccer teams based off of the amount of contact during the game.

With all of the different towns playing each other, they are scared of cross contaminating everyone. You may not realize the amount of people you see everyday until a situation like this comes and you have to wonder who you have been with. By not wanting this to happen there are many new guidelines that the soccer teams have to follow. These include no touching each other or the ball, except for goalies, no heading the ball at all, if it hits your head by accident it’s an automatic free kick for the other team and all of the free kicks have to be played on the ground.

Dani Almeida, a junior midfielder on the TMHS girls varsity soccer team states, “I think the rules are gonna be frustrating, especially with no contact. Every ref is going to be different every game and either going to be strict with the no contact rule or not so much, every game is going to be different.” Going off of what she said Iris Diaz, who is also a member of the team and is a senior captain explained, “The restrictions make us more reluctant to defend a player, and the possibility of getting a yellow card will distract us from actually playing the game.”

The idea that all the refs are going to be different with how they run the game is a scary thought. They want to ensure that we are being safe but also still be able to play the game we love without a whistle every 2 minutes. A rule that was installed to ensure the referees safety was that if any player runs in the direction of the referees, they will get a yellow card. This is what Iris is talking about with the cards distracting us from playing. This will cause lots of arguments between the coaches, players and refs while the game is going on.

This past week the MVC put a pause on all fall sports involving contact to discuss what they wanted to do with the new information about many towns going into the “red zone” which means there are a lot of Covid cases in that town and it is spreading rapidly. Many of us can see where they are coming from with this, I know I am one of them, but we all just want to play the sport we love and will do anything to play, so if it means waiting a week to ensure we are safe to play that is fine by all of us. Hopefully the season turns out the way that everyone wants and the rules become less and less strict as time goes on.