The new variant of Covid-19 has taken the world by storm. With some of the highest numbers since the beginning of the pandemic. New Jersey has had 37,285 new cases in one day on Jan. 5. Rules are changing, schools are getting more strict, and more and more places are requiring masks or vaccination cards.
The step away from all the Covid restrictions seems to have taken us closer to how things were when Covid first hit two years ago. School was returning to how it was before the pandemic began; very few people were doing virtual classes, desk shields that were no longer mandated, and masks were one of the only things that seemed to have been consistent throughout this new year. After many students came back from break, there were sharp increases in Covid cases. With this increase, one-third of all schools in New Jersey have chosen to go fully remote for the time being.
Sporting events were also given an update regarding attendance in the stands. KHS Athletic Director Mr. Doty sent an email to students with the following information, “We are now limiting spectator attendance at KHS home athletic events that are contested here at KHS to just immediate family members only… Many other schools will be doing the same thing with their spectator rules.”
High school sporting events can no longer be how they were earlier this fall. There are no more large portions of students allowed to enter the events. KHS Junior and track runner Sean Ford said, “Events are not as intense as they used to be. There were always a lot of crowds watching at the meets, and now there definitely are still some people, just not as many as before. It kinda makes the meets less fun.”
Some students are simply grateful to be playing at all, as Junior Ilya Klevtsov said, “We have had a lot of game cancellations because of covid. There were also a lot of quarantines we had to do. Besides that there is nothing much that different. We are just glad to play puck.” What appears to be one of the only good things about this current outbreak is that it is making people think about how grateful they are for still having opportunities to do what they love.
