Editor’s Note: As Cleveland deals with the outbreak of the new coronavirus, or COVID-19, everyday life is being disrupted. In our new series “How It Feels,” we’re talking to students, teachers, nurses and those on the frontline of the pandemic to see what it feels like to live life in isolation and transition to new ways of working, thinking and living.
It’s not just the coaches and teachers who are shouldering the burden of leadership as student-athletes head back to a very different school year.
Breaking into teams, Malchesky and his fellow captains were each in charge of leading about 10-15 players through at-home playbook studies and workouts. The high school seniors wanted to make sure every member of the team felt informed, included, motivated and supported, especially the younger players. All the while, players were faced with the stress of not knowing whether they’d have a senior season at all.
“You have to make sure you’re shooting everybody texts here and there or playing video games with each other or something like that,” says Malchesky. “[The sense of brotherhood] might be better this year because we’ve had to suffer together and learn to adapt to new rules and trust each other more. If you can get through this, you’re going to come out stronger.”
If all goes well, meaning if no teammates or opponents test positive for COVID-19, Lake will play six regular season games and a guaranteed seventh playoff game in 2020. Before Malchesky takes on the back-to-back state champion Kirtland Hornets in the Cougars’ home opener Aug. 28, he talks to us about the challenges he’s facing in a very different senior season.
It’s definitely been stressful the past few months. You’re just checking the news, seeing if there’s updates. Even now it’s stressful because some high school games have been cancelled because kids have gotten the coronavirus.
The off-season Zoom meetings made things a lot different. We needed them because otherwise you’d get behind on the offensive and defensive schemes. But after so many Zoom meetings, you get kind of fed up of being online.
We had to be self-motivated without any coaches yelling at us. Coach [Jimmy] King, our strength coach, sent workouts for us to do at home. Luckily I had weights, but if not, he’d send you some bodyweight workouts. It’s definitely weird, but we were able to overcome that situation. I don’t feel any less physically prepared, but I definitely feel more mentally prepared [than past seasons] because of all the time we dedicated to the Zoom calls.
When we finally got the helmets and shoulder pads on and started flying around [the field] and bumping into each other a little bit, it was uplifting. It gave us this sense of hope.
There are definitely a lot of little differences. We get our temperatures checked before every practice and game. We have to pull up our mask any time we’re not on the field. We won’t have any fans in the stands besides parents, who have to all spread out, and we’ll have our band but [the away team] won’t even have their band. So you’re really relying on those guys on the sideline for some extra motivation.
But once we’re out on the field, we’re just playing football.
I don’t have any fear, because I know we’ve done our part to social distance and protect everybody. You have to trust that the other schools are doing the same. It’s a tough way to approach your senior season. But our coaches have taught us to focus on the things we can control, and do the things we can do, and just hope everything works out.
