How’s everybody doing? I’m not doing great, and I want everyone to know it’s OK if you feel the same. It has been a difficult couple of weeks, and it appears the news will only get worse in the coming days.
Our lives have been turned upside-down as many folks face difficult economic times due to layoffs and furloughs, while even the most fortunate must adjust to a new normal that includes working from home or unexpectedly running a home school.
That’s not to mention our friends and neighbors who might fall ill with a virus that is threatening exponentially more lives each day.
There is so much uncertainty in everything, from how long this will remain a threat in our country and our community to what things will look like when this is “over” — with the knowledge that we aren’t exactly sure what that even means.
It really hit home for me this weekend, when we were all sitting at home when we should have been watching the area’s top high school basketball stars put on a show at the Lowco Basketball Showcase. The uniforms and awards are sitting in my garage … waiting. Another crushing blow will come in two weeks, when we’re *supposed* to be welcoming the world’s best golfers to the Lowcountry for the RBC Heritage Presented By Boeing.
No one is quite sure when we will return to school or work (for those of us whose jobs are “non-essential”), let alone when we can return to playing sports. Resuming the spring high school season is technically still on the table in South Carolina, but with each passing day it seems less likely. The bigger question at this point may be whether playing high school football is a realistic goal this fall.
When sports competition does return, it will probably be without spectators, at least for a while. It’s easy enough to conceive that testing supplies will be plentiful enough by August to ensure no players, coaches, or officials are carrying the virus, but introducing a crowd of spectators opens a much larger can of worms.
If that happens, we’ll be here to document what happens in every game, match, and meet, and if we can safely attend the events and take photos and video, we’ll do that, too.
And when it is safe to come together in large numbers, we’ll let those ballers put on that show, and we’ll try to put something together to let the seniors from spring sports to have their time to shine.
In the meantime, we’re going to start cranking out more Senior Student-Athlete Spotlight articles, and we’ll keep the episodes of the Lowco Rundown and the Lowco Lowdown podcast coming, introducing you to more of the great teams and athletes from Beaufort and Jasper counties.
This game is just getting started, and we’re going to need our defense to keep us in it so we have a chance to come out on top at the end.
And even though we have to keep our distance for now, we will get through this together.
By Justin Jarrett
