‘Being away was killing me.’ Merced County athletes ready for return to sports
After months of running on her own, Golden Valley High School junior Brianna Aguilar was back at cross country practice this week with her friends and teammates.
Aguilar didn’t mind the sprinkles and cold weather as she jogged in a light jacket around campus.
“I’m very excited,” Aguilar said. “I’m glad to get back what I’m used to and hopefully compete like we did before. Being with my teammates is one of the things I enjoy the most every day.”
Meanwhile Atwater High junior Justin Bizzack is spending his early Friday morning in a pool practicing with his teammates.
“Being away was killing me,” Bizzack said. “Swimming was something I did every day and then we to stop. It definitely threw me off a lot.”
High school sports competitions are returning to Merced County for the first time since March, when everything was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The four sports beginning competition this coming week are cross country, girls golf, swimming and girls tennis. All four sports are permitted to be played while the county is currently in the purple tier, which is the state’s most restrictive designation for reopening under its COVID-19 plan, denoting “widespread risk” of viral transmission.
“I was laughing last week that I haven’t had this many kids excited for a swimming practice,” said Atwater High swimming coach David Svendsen. “The kids are on cloud nine, they’re excited to have something to look forward to each day. It’s a positive for their mental health.”
A league of their own
The Sac-Joaquin Section Board of Managers voted to allow each of its 26 leagues to decide when each sport can start. The section also gave the freedom to schools to change different leagues if needed, as long as both leagues affected signed off on the changes.
Most of the moves were made to adhere to the state’s COVID-19 travel restrictions for sports teams. The restrictions prevented local schools from competing against those in other counties, unless the two competing schools share a physical county border.
The restrictions made it almost impossible for leagues like the Trans-Valley League and the Southern League to schedule games because those leagues stretch across multiple counties.
Most of the Merced County schools will become members of the Central California Conference for this school year. The conference will consist of Merced, Golden Valley, Buhach Colony, Atwater, El Capitan, Hilmar, Livingston, Delhi, Gustine, Stone Ridge Christian, Dos Palos and Le Grand high schools.
Los Banos and Pacheco opted to stay with the WAC, which will also be comprised of Patterson, Central Valley, Ceres, Johansen and Lathrop.
The first girls tennis matches in the CCC will be held on Thursday, Feb. 18.
The first CCC swimming meets will start on Friday, Feb. 19.
Cross Country will start on Feb. 24 and girls golf will begin on Feb. 22.
Salvaged seasons
Like most athletes, Aguilar is happy all her hard work didn’t go to waste. When she was home during the COVID-19 pandemic, she would go out for a daily 3-5 mile run after finishing her homework.
“If there wasn’t a season it would have been heartbreaking,” she said. “This is my third year doing cross country. I didn’t want COVID to mess it all up. I was worried a season wasn’t going to happen.”
Golden Valley cross country coach Jacqueline Wooding says her team is down 15 to 20 athletes because some parents didn’t want to risk their kids returning to practice.
Merced had just eight athletes on its cross country team during a scrimmage last week.
Wooding is happy to see that kids who want to have a season can have a season. Especially a kid like Aguilar who works hard all year.
“She’s definitely an overachiever when it comes to working out,” Wooding said. “She did not miss a day of practice, even with the start and stopping of when we were allowed to work out. She wanted to work out each day and get better. You want to allow those athletes an opportunity to compete.
Bizzack also hopes his hard work has helped him become one of the fastest swimmers in the CCC. His father Ronnie swam at Atwater High for Svendsen’s father Roddy.
Bizzack says one of the highlights for him coming to school every day was getting in the pool. Having that taken away for 11 months was unthinkable.
He doesn’t want to think what it would have been like without a season. “It would have hurt big time,” Bizzack said. “To put in all the effort and not have a season, yeah, that would have hurt.”
Svendsen says the forced break from sports may be a lesson for athletes.
“It teaches you not to take anything for granted,” Svendsen said. “If there’s anything positive in this it’s you learn to value stuff a little more because it can be taken away from you in the blink of an eye.”
