Pause extended, season delayed

In case you missed it: Marist College extended its campus-wide pause – this includes suspension of all Division 1 athletics activities, practice and competition – through Wednesday, March 31. The number of positive Covid cases continues to rise each day, and the number of active Covid cases has remained stable. In this case, “stable” is not great; it’s better than increasing, but not decreasing means no improvement means we stay stuck in the mud of yet another pause.

We have an outdoor track schedule for 2021. We have no idea if and when we will be able to participate in that schedule and get on an actual track. Our first scheduled meet was Saturday, April 3 at Rider University. That meet in Lawrenceville, NJ, will go on as scheduled, but your Running Red Foxes won’t be there. We have meets scheduled for every weekend in April and into early May. Will we be able to attend these meets? I don’t know. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, in an ironic twist of fate, yesterday (Saturday, March 27) was an absolutely gorgeous early spring day. Sunny and mild, gentle breezes. In “normal” years, this would be the day we would have started our outdoor track season, at the Monmouth Season Opener. That meet is not happening this year – everyone’s schedules have been scuttled. But if it had been held, weatherwise it would have been a great day! Usually, that meet features cold, wind, rain – and some combination of all of that. This year? Great weather, but no early bus, no meal money, no nothing … stuck in Poughkeepsie, on pause.

We always search for reasons, ask “why” questions, which these days usually devolves into finger pointing and blame. A lot of that going on around here. Why is the virus so persistent in and around the Marist campus? What’s going on? I’ve thought about this, probably way too much. I’ve posed this question, every weekday morning (except Wednesday), when I teach Public Presentations – mostly on Zoom … imagine that, “public” speaking on Zoom, but that’s another story. The students in class, almost all of them non-athletes, express frustration and fatigue and an attitude – especially off campus – of exasperation and even resignation. They’re done with the virus; the virus is not done with us. Seems like I write the same sentences in different posts. Pause continues.