Note:  This article was written before Gretchen Whitmer suspended high school sports fall tournaments starting November 18 for at least 3 weeks.

“The second we get out of the pool we have to put our masks on,” said Loy Norrix sophomore Norah Deyoung. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic happening in 2020, the fall high school sports season looks a little different than normal. 

March 23 marked the first day of quarantine due to COVID-19. It’s been

 225 days since then and fall sports are happening, but with additional precautions.

A couple of the fall sports happening right now are women’s swim and women’s golf. Governor Gretchen Whitmer reinstated high school fall sports in Michigan after so many student athletes were missing out on their sports because of COVID-19. Now they are up and running, but with many new rules.

Loy Norrix sophomore Maia Lintner talks about the new rules as a result of the coronavirus pandemic in women’s golf. 

“We have to take temperatures before practice, and coach asks us questions like, ‘have you had a cough in the last 24 hours? And have you been around anyone with covid in the last 24 hours?’” said Lintner 

Women’s swim has similar COVID precautions. “Right when we get into the pool area we have to take our temperatures,” said Deyoung. 

Due to COVID, a lot of high school sports seasons started later than they normally do. Also, a lot of practices have been cut short, and games have been cancelled. 

This has been the case with women’s golf. 

“The season started a little later this year than it did last year because the school was still deciding what to do with sports and stuff. We have fewer matches and practices too,” said Lintner.

Both Lintner and Deyoung say they wear masks when they are at practice, but once they begin to golf or swim, they can take their masks off. 

According to the CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “Masks are an additional step to help slow the spread of COVID-19 when combined with everyday preventive actions and social distancing in public settings.” 

 “We wear masks while we are talking as a group,” said Lintner, “but we can take them off when we are golfing on our own.” 

While golfing it is pretty easy to stay socially distanced, but while swimming they have to stay distanced within each swimming lane. 

“So my lane has five girls. There’s two on the wall on one side, one in the middle and two on the wall on the other side” said Deyoung. Team members do this to stay socially distanced while swimming.

“There are a lot of things different, and it takes some getting used to, but at the end of the day, I still have fun swimming with my teammates!” said Deyoung.