As students were returning to school from their Winter Break spent with friends and family, January was characterized by a massive COVID-19 outbreak that stormed Los Angeles County and brought new positive cases of the Omicron variant to Gahr High School. Students were exposed to the virus left and right, and many were pulled out of class - oftentimes in the middle of a lecture - to quarantine at home under S.T.I.S., or short-term independent study, for about a week (or even longer for those who were not vaccinated). This not only caused numerous students to fall behind in their studies but also impacted the numerous athletes who were unable to attend practices with their teams.

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Gahr’s Track and Field long-distance team, headed by Coach Leighliter, was just one of the sports affected by the recent COVID-19 surges. Several runners who were exposed to COVID-19 and received the S.T.I.S. email had to follow a workout schedule provided by Coach Leighliter at home, by themselves. Having been one of those students exposed to COVID-19, I found myself running 400m intervals around my neighborhood complex while using my phone as a stopwatch and completing longer runs on the San Gabriel River Trail, recording my distance with the Strava app. Although this was similar to my experience as a freshman athlete during 2020’s online learning, after having experienced running in a team setting, I realized the advantages of having a team- especially for running, which is often (mistakenly) associated with being solely an individual sport.

 

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