In 2020, Sports Was About Staying Safe and Speaking Out

There were virtual and cardboard fans in baseball and the Bundesliga, and the Covid-positive Justin Turner posing on the field after his Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series. The pandemic shuffled calendars: the Tour de France to September; the French Open to October, with Rafael Nadal reliably winning his 13th there; and the Masters to November without azaleas. College football was stumbling and fumbling, the Vanderbilt soccer goalie Sarah Fuller kicked for the football team, Kim Ng became the first female general manager in baseball, and the Denver Broncos lost all their quarterbacks to coronavirus carelessness.

Phew. Good luck rhyming that. Throughout it all, the bubble was the refrain.

“We all had the understanding that the season was for something,” Nneka Ogwumike, the president of the W.N.B.A. Players Association and a Los Angeles Sparks forward, said in an interview. At the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., 144 players from 12 teams sequestered for a shortened 22-game regular season, concluding with a Seattle Storm title in October.

“Even to make it to the end was an incredible feat, emotionally and physically,” Ogwumike said. “We were able to impact our communities and fans and the sports world in a way that we had hoped to.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/sports/year-bubble-coronavirus-moments.html