What These Athletes Learned From Their Pandemic Pauses

An Olympic team hopeful, Lee, 17, had been prepping to compete in the 2020 Tokyo Games. The pandemic threw those plans off course and brought heartbreaking tragedy to her family, as a beloved aunt and uncle died of Covid-19, just 13 days apart.

What’s helped me get through this year is remembering that it’s been a weird time for everybody. Now I think pretty much everybody on the national team is back training like usual. I’ve been able to do all my skills, but getting through my routines is hard because I need more endurance after taking so much time off.

The biggest thing that’s changed since last year is that there are so many new girls trying for the Olympic team now. It’s crazy how many new girls there are! They’re ones who didn’t qualify for 2020 because they were a year too young, but now qualify for 2021 because the rules changed to let girls turning 16 next year compete. Personally, I feel like it’s unfair, and I’m sure a lot of the other older girls agree with me. It puts a lot more pressure on us older gymnasts, but we do have a lot of experience and that means a lot.

We haven’t had a national team camp in a long, long time, and I miss it because I miss seeing my friends there. When we’re there, the national team coaches select us for future meets after seeing what each of us can do. But now we have to show the coaches on video instead of showing them in person, and I don’t like it. I’d rather perform live and in person, because I actually like getting nervous. I like the adrenaline. If the Olympic trials will happen without fans, that’s really not going to be much fun for me, because I love performing.

Outside of gymnastics, I was hoping this would be a regular year for me, and it would’ve been if the Olympics would’ve happened last summer. I would have gone to a regular school and would have been a regular senior in high school, with me getting ready for college. There would be no stress, but lots of fun, like going to senior tailgates. They had one senior tailgate this year that I would’ve gone to, but didn’t, because, yep, I had practice. It would’ve been a great last year of high school if the pandemic didn’t happen and I wasn’t still training for Tokyo.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/sports/breanna-stewart-kyle-lewis-sunisa-lee-rudy-garcia-tolson.html