Boys’ and Girls’ Volleyball Team Updates
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, several fall sports at Irvington including girls’ volleyball have been postponed to as late as December. Although the team doesn’t anticipate returning to the courts anytime soon, their priority if returning would be the safety of the players.
Coach Christopher Kwan, the girls’ volleyball coach, believes outdoor workouts will be permitted to begin sometime in October but would consist of small groups of players and safety precautions including masks and social distancing would be implemented. Indoor workouts are expected to start in December but there would be more safety protocols enforced including sanitization of all surfaces regularly. Kwan illustrated the difficulty of this: “ That is the part that is going to be problematic – how do we clean everything. We are going to have to wipe everything down. I am going to do my best to follow the rules they give us as well as being cautious and reminding everyone about practicing protocol. Safety is my number one priority.”
If the season was to begin in December, Coach Kwan anticipates that both girls’ and boys’ volleyball will have to take place in the gym at the same time. He explained, “In the past, girls are during the fall and the boys are during the spring. Since both teams are together now, we would have to share the gym and game days would be much longer because all of us are playing together.” Since both teams will have games on the same days, games may likely run much longer than they have in the past. Unlike some other sports, volleyball games are not timed meaning that the game ends depending on how long it takes one team to reach a certain number of points. As a result, players on the boys’ and girls’ volleyball teams may end up leaving games very late.
Although most of the team is upset about not being able to play, seniors are especially affected as this was their last season. Audrey Lee (12) was hoping to compete with her team for the last time this year; she explained, “Since this was my senior year, I was hoping to improve as a player and a teammate and also qualify for NCS and potentially win. Our team has had a bad past with players getting injured quite often so I was hoping this year would be different in that sense too.”Girls’ volleyball at Irvington has an unfortunate history of enduring far too many injuries throughout the season and the team was looking forward to putting an end to that this year as well. A similar sentiment was echoed by members of the Boys’ volleyball team, Andrew Choi (12), a member of the Varsity team noted that members have come to peace with the new changes this year, remarking that “Everyone’s probably over [the changes] by now being a new school year. We’re just hoping for the next [season] to be available. I am personally sad as I’m sure we all were.”
If they have a season this school year, the Volleyball team predicts extensive safety precautions as well as lengthy game days but are nonetheless, excited to be able to get back on the court.