Reflection after the 1-year mark of the pandemic

It's hard to separate my love of sports from the rest of my life, so naturally some of my early reflections of the COVID-19 pandemic revolve around athletics. In those early days, most of us were on pins and needles. Like never before, the world around us shut down. There were no live sports, another first. All I could do was look forward to Sunday night when ESPN's documentary on Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls — "The Last Dance" — would come on. For a handful of Sundays, I swear that show is what kept me going into the next week. There was the odd slow return of live sports, which trickled onto the screen in forms I never would have imagined. Suddenly, I was watching a H-O-R-S-E competition between NBA players and could recite the teams in the Korean Baseball League, one of the few outfits offering live competition at the time. But nothing stands out to me more than those first moments when we collectively realized "this is not a drill." A college hoops aficionado, I was settling in to watch a game on a non-descript night when the announcers' tone changed. They were talking about an NBA game that stopped midway through because a player was found to be positive with COVID-19. Uh oh, I thought. This isn't good — games just don't stop midway through. In my mind, I hoped we were all overreacting. I hoped it was just precautionary that this game was canceled, and that the sports world would magically return to normal the next day. Go to bed and the problems will all fade away. The next day, I was sitting in the board room of The Courier's office, hosting our weekly manager meeting. It was while going over stories, circulation numbers and advertising opportunities, I got a one-two punch that struck my core. This was my first March in Ohio, and rather than staring at snowbanks dreaming of the first warm winds of spring, outdoor sports are somewhat playable here in the third month of the year. I was so excited my daughter would be able to have her first soccer practice that night. I would go to the field, talk to some friends, maybe walk a few laps. Then my phone buzzed … practice was canceled. Moments later, I checked my phone again. The NCAA tournament was called off. It was such an odd moment. That was it. No negotiating. A normally busy chat app for our soccer team went quiet. With professional and college sports, talking heads are compensated through their "hot takes," and every decision is scrutinized. Not the cancellation of sports. That was it, and now we move on. The virtual school. The endless scrolling of news stories in hopes of any morsel of positive COVID news. Supply chain shortages and trying to avoid people while grocery shopping. Not being able to go to church. It was all traumatic, abrupt and hard to process. It was a time where the joy of life was snuffed and we were all forced into a sort of "fight or flight" mentality. I think the things that give us the most joy are those whose absence or modification allows us to best frame the effects of the past year. Not being able to travel, go out to dinner, go to the gym, go to concerts. I missed all of those things, too. But for me, it was sports, admittedly a minor thing compared to the death and economic destruction we've seen, that put it all in perspective. This week is the one-year anniversary of that crazy week when the world shut down like an industrial machine halting after producing its last product of the assembly line shift. Now, there is more hope in the air, but we are still reaping the challenges and fallout of COVID — physical, mental and economical. I don't know when life gets back to 100% normalcy, but what I do know is I'll enjoy that NCAA Tournament, that first soccer practice, that opening day of baseball more than ever before. If I've learned anything over the past 365 days, it's to not take anything for granted. Jeremy Speer is the publisher of The Advertiser-Tribune in Tiffin, The Courier in Findlay and the Review Times in Fostoria. He can be reached at jeremyspeer@thecourier.com or jspeer@advertiser-tribune.com.