Essential Question: Is it just a sport?

Sports are a lifeline in my teenage life by Liliana Chavarria, Brian Gomez-Romero, Toniyah Johnson and Laila Lucas from Kenwood high school. COVID 19 has changed everyone's life in manys ways.  It stopped everyone from going out, working, playing sports and going outside their house in general. COVID has taken many lives. It has broken many families and friends because COVID has taken their loved ones. 

We all know that COVID has changed the way we live but it has also changed sports. Inside sports had to stop playing until things went down a little bit. Outside sports and sports where you make contact with another person. I know this because I play soccer and at first we stopped practicing for a lil and then we came back but we had to wear out masks and it wasn’t the same anymore we all had our own space where we could only be and we had to stay in that place the whole practice and we were all 6 or more feet apart from each other. For outside sports it didn’t take as long to get back to playing as sports that are played inside like basketball and volleyball and sports like those. In professional sports they had to stop playing as well and then once they started playing again they couldn't have any fans come watch their games. 

How sports are our therapy.  Sports help us get away from our problems. It gets our minds off everything we have been thinking about, worrying about. When we feel down or things like that we go play our sport.  Playing our sports just makes us happy again. It helps us in ways that no one could ever imagine. Like for example I have been playing soccer for about 8 years now and i’ve learned so much with a ball at my feet. I've made mistakes, I learned, I lost, I won. When things get hard I don't go out and smoke or drink to get my mind off things. I go out and train to get my mind off everything and then after I am done I feel a little better. 

In my opinion COVID has helped me for the better. Once Covid started and we had to stop going to school I had so much time. I made a deal with myself that I will work hard  everyday and better myself everyday. So I was working hard everyday to try to improve myself as much as i can so when we go back to playing our sports i will be in the best shape and i will be way better than i was when we stopped playing. So as the days went by I was seeing improvement and I was getting more muscle mass. Then once the gyms opened back up I got a membership and started getting more muscle and getting more in shape.  I was also seeing improvement in my soccer skills. Once we were able to start playing our sports again I got a starting position in the team and people were recognizing my body improvement and my soccer skills improvement. So for me COVID has changed my life for the better and I am proud of myself for working hard while other people were being lazy and gaining weight. 

COVID has changed everyone's life in different ways.  It has either helped them in a good or in a bad way. It changed the way we live. We had to start wearing masks. COVID has changed the sports by not being able to have fans. By having to be in quarantine for 2 weeks if they get covid and the athletics have to get tested often.