End of school year means high school athletics finished for seniors

Published 4:56 pm Tuesday, April 14, 2020

U

ncertainty is the prevailing emotion of the day isn’t it?

We know one day that COVID-19 will be defeated and that our front-line workers in the emergency rooms and critical care units won’t have to live in fear of exposing their family to what they’ve battled at work every night when they return home.

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Will it be an existing drug that treats the virus or is a new vaccine option going to be fast-tracked? — Uncertain.

We know that one day we’ll be back moving around with more freedom. Stores will be open again and restaurants will be filled on weekends like they were before.

Will some of our favorite local restaurants and small businesses be able to weather the storm though or will their forced closings end with many shuttering for good? — Uncertain.

School, work, church, the present, the future — we’re all filling our heads with questions right now that don’t have answers.

I don’t envy the decision makers at the local, state and federal level.

There is no easy button for this that will tell them, “yes, you can reopen Disney World, it’s ok for 80,000 people to be standing shoulder to shoulder waiting for the closing ceremony in front of the castle.”

The leaders who decide those type of things will get second-guessed either way they go.

You’re never going to make everyone happy. That said, I think we all appreciate when they act with decisiveness.

On Tuesday our governor made the decision to close on-ground learning for the state until next school year.

That means no more high school athletics for the student-athletes that participated in spring sports.

The class of 2020 is going through unprecedented times. They’ve waited their turn for senior prom, graduation and all the pomp and circumstance only to see those things taken away from them due to a pandemic.

I’m sure that when they went home on the Friday before Spring Break that never in their wildest dreams though they’d be finished with high school — but that’s a reality that they’re facing.

We won’t have an all-area softball or baseball team this season. I pride myself on selecting the players for those honors based on what my own eyes tell me, I try and watch every team in our area multiple times each season so that I know who the best players, coaches and teams are.

There wasn’t enough time in the abbreviated season for me to see everyone before the plug was pulled.

What I’d like to do instead is move “Senior Night” to the pages of this newspaper. I’d like to spotlight the senior athletes in our area not just for softball and baseball, but also for track, tennis and golf.

My goal is for a headshot of every senior athlete that had their season cut short to run in the pages of The Daily Leader over the next several weeks. I’d also like to run a short bio — the kind you hear read out at senior night — for each student.

Help me out by sharing this article with the coaches and sponsors for the spring sports from Brookhaven High, Brookhaven Academy, Enterprise, Loyd Star, Bogue Chitto, West Lincoln, Wesson or Lawrence County.

They can reach out to me via email at sports@dailyleader.com and we can begin to compile the information.

It’s a small consolation to the kids that are losing their senior season but it would be my honor to write about them one more time.

Cliff Furr is the sports editor at The Daily Leader. He can be reached at sports@dailyleader.com