So...Wrestling?

November and Phase 3 allowed for sports to start in our county. Part of my bachelor weekend was spent completing online training courses to be eligible to coach. 

There are lots of rules.

November is only for pre-season conditioning. Practices are twice a week and limited to an hour and a half. Seasons will start delayed and out of order. Winter sports will be the first sports to have a season. That will start in December. There will be no spectators allowed at events. Students have to be socially distant and masked leading up to practices. Coaches will remain masked at all times.

I expected most of these things save the no spectators allowed. 

The biggest restriction for wrestling I haven't mentioned yet? No physical contact.

None of the sports are allowed to have contact between students or any shared equipment (such as using the same ball).

There are individual drills in all sports, but at some point there has to be contact. Especially for wrestling.

Even with the restrictions, overall turnout was decent. I think they said something like 120 kids showed up for the first Monday of pre-season training (roughly 10% of the student population). More students should have showed up for the sports on the Tuesday/Thursday rotation.

Wrestling had two. Two wrestlers. Two coaches. A cleverly angled picture made the room less empty than it really was.

I didn't go to the first practice, and I'm glad. Coaches would've outnumbered the wrestlers, so I would've driven 40 minutes to do nothing. 

I've traded texts with Coach Rick and said that I was going to hold off until the season. I don't see the point if I would be of no use. 

Practice hours are at a terrible time for me, too (5:30 - 7 PM). Class ends on average around 4:45 PM for me and then it's time for barn chores before we run out of light. I host a Wednesday night office hours at 7 PM each week that would be disrupted, as well.

There's a required online Zoom meeting at 8 AM on Dec. 2. The season is supposed to start Dec 14. I've completed the required courses, but I'm really not sure if I'm going to coach this year or not.

And that's why I haven't posted anything about wrestling lately. 

I'm not sad, per se. I just don't think about it much, because I'm busy doing other things. I would have felt the absence more keenly if I was physically at school and the program was running, but there's a different flow of life working at home.