Senior Athlete Interview

Savannah Hutchins and

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of interviewing one of the cross country team members, Leonardo Ramos. I talked to Leonardo about how the team has reacted to different challenges since the start of COVID-19 and about the team for this year and this is his take on it. Leonardo said, “Even with COVID-19 I feel like most of the team put in the work over the summer for this upcoming season. Even now everyone is putting in the work during practice and showing it in the races.” I then asked what goals they plan to achieve and if their expectations had changed Leonardo responded, “Our goals as a team are to compete in the conference against the top schools which means to attempt to win every race that we have the opportunity to go to. Another goal we’ve had in mind since last cross country season is to qualify for state.” There are tons of new expectations for us at practice and in races. We are expected to stay far apart from each other with or without the masks. Even though it has been two months since we’ve begun following these expectations we are still getting used to it, as in the years beforehand we’ve gathered with friends after practice. In races, we follow these expectations as well, so as soon as we finish a race we go straight to our masks.” Lastly, I ended the interview with how he felt about how COVID-19 has affected school sports. He stated, “It has been difficult as this is our new normal. We never expected a virus to just hit us and put us into lockdown to quarantine ourselves from other people. As much as we dislike not being able to socialize it is to help keep ourselves and our family safe. As for impact sports, it is just another adversity we have to face. We face difficulties during our sports career such as injuries, but we have to continue to work hard to show others the dedication and perseverance that we hold within ourselves.” Even though it has been rough these past few months at home, Leonardo and his team hope that they will continue to have a great cross country season this year!