On Friday, November 20, a pause on all indoor youth sports was called by Gov. JB Pritzker due to the skyrocketing number of Covid-19 cases. 10,875 deaths from the virus have been reported in Illinois and Pritzker believes that the cases will only escalate. The projection of deaths in Illinois is 17,000-45,000 between now and March 1, with number of positive cases predicted to be four or five times more than the wave in Spring. In order to prevent so many deaths, Pritzker has set up more restrictions, one of which being a hold on all youth indoor sports and one Lincoln-Way Central sport that was affected was the girls bowling team. 

     Starting on Friday, November 20, all bowling practices are cancelled until further notice. Despite the misfortune of not being able to practice or play, Coach Paulsen agrees that, “it’s bad but something we’ve never thought of before so it’s new to everything. Better safe than sorry since we don’t know anything about it.” It’s still unknown on whether the sports season will be cut short or moved to the spring but the goal is to not cancel any sports this year. It’s also still unknown on how matches will be made up, and also due to covid-19, all tournaments have been cancelled. 

     Hopefully the pause on sports won’t be long and sports may resume once more. The IHSA met on December 2 but still couldn’t come to a decision on how sports should proceed, a meeting on December 14 yielded a few decisions, but requires further discussion with state officials in order to set forth guidelines.

     With the holiday season now in the past, many people still chose to travel which may help add fuel to the fire in this quarantine so it’s unknown when covid-19 will finally start dipping down and Operation Warp Speed, a partnership among the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Defenses, are currently helping to distribute millions of vaccine doses for covid-19 as quickly as possible while ensuring its effectiveness and safety. As the vaccine became available at the end of 2020, hope for the pause on sports to be lifted grows amongst students.

     With blended learning planned to be resumed on January 19, we can hope that winter sports will soon resume as well. Until covid-19 starts to settle done, all we can do is cross our fingers, practice social distancing, and stay safe.