{"id":13797,"date":"2020-04-01T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelaker.ca\/?p=13797"},"modified":"2020-04-01T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T12:00:00","slug":"covid19-local-fall-river-area-athletes-in-u-s-describe-reaction-impact-to-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/?p=13797","title":{"rendered":"COVID19: Local Fall River-area athletes in U.S. describe reaction, impact to pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FALL RIVER:<\/strong> The magnitude of the COVID19 pandemic was initially \u201claughed off\u201d by athletes at the University of Florida, said a Fletchers Lake soccer star who is in her first year as a Gator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sydney Kennedy, who arrived home on March 22 and has been in 14-day self-isolation since, described the reaction to the Coronavirus hitting the shores of the United States, and the reaction her fellow students had as its impact became a reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kennedy was one of three athletes from the Fall River area who were in the U.S. as COVID19 began to make its mark. The others were Bridget Deveau in Boston, although she had made her way home to Fall River; and Nikki Wadden, who now lives in Nevada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo one was really worried\nabout going out in public and doing normal everyday activities like grocery\nshopping, going out to eat, etc. Or going home for that matter,\u201d said Kennedy in\nan interview upon arriving home. \u201cUntil the Florida Governor came out with a\nstatement revealing that four UF students tested positive for a Corona. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe then received an email from the University President not even five minutes later stating that all students who had not gone home yet had to go, if possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sydney Kennedy. (Twitter pic)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Kennedy said that most of\nthe athletes had remained in Gainesville, Fla., to train on their own, though\nthere was only one gym open and all public parks were closed too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow, basically everyone\nis gone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kennedy, an alum from Halifax West, said students at\nthe UF had began hearing rumours a day or so before that classes and sports\nwould be cancelled because of COVID19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne day after practice we all\nhad emails from the President at UF saying that classes would likely be held\nonline for a period of time because of Corona,\u201d she explained. \u201cThe email\nstated that teachers would have to slowly make the transition from in class to\nonline. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEveryone laughed off the\nemail, none of us took it that seriously, we had no idea what was about to\nhappen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Not even 12 hours later students got an email\nthat said there was no more transition and that all classes were required to be\nonline. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe started to take\nthings more seriously now and people started to panic a little bit, we now\nrealized that everyone\u2019s seasons could possibly be about to end and that our\nlives were about to be flipped upside down,\u201d said Kennedy. \u201cNot even a day\nlater, we got an email from our conference president terminating all sports in\nthe conference. This included all sports, even the ones about to go into\nchampionships, march madness, etc. Everyone in the athlete world was\ndevastated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a whirlwind 24\nhours for athletes like Kennedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe went from a\nsuggestion to make all classes online, to all sports and classes being made\nonline\/cancelled completely, in just 24 hours,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was so chaotic.\nSo many changes happened in one day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kennedy said being away from\nfamily during this time was tough, but she stayed in contact with family daily.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI also had a lot of\nsupport from other athletes as there is not many international student athletes,\u201d\nshe said. \u201cEveryone knew the situation I was in being so far away from home and\nhad my back. That\u2019s one thing that makes UF so special, the athletes are one\nbig family, everyone\u2019s got each other\u2019s backs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said classes are to\nremain online for UF throughout the rest of the spring and summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kennedy said COVID19\ndidn\u2019t have her scared until the four cases at UF were announced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While she will be in\nself-isolation for 14 days after arriving home, Kennedy is glad to be under the\nsame roof as her family, especially during this stressful time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter\nthe two weeks of self isolation I plan to make the most of my time with my\nfamily and enjoy some time to relax before year two,\u201d she said with a smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fall River\u2019s Deveau said\nwhen she left Boston, Mass., things\nwere just getting started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve spent most of the pandemic here\nin NS,\u201d said Deveau. \u201cAs far as I know, things are shut down there like they\nare here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wadden, who is the Assistant\nDirector of Football Operations at Nevada University in Reno, Nevada, said the\nstate Governor shut things all down on March 19 to non-essential business\n(including hotels and casinos). Everything was to be closed 30 days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At NU, Wadden said, professors were required to move classes online by\nand finish the rest of the semester online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs for Athletics, teams are not allowed to practice or play any games,\u201d\nthe Fall River product said. \u201cWe have cancelled our Spring football practices\nand our Spring Football game which was supposed to be on April 25. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are utilizing the application Zoom to do a team meeting every morning (Monday-Friday) and position group meetings for the team to study film and our plays.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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FALL RIVER: The magnitude of the COVID19 pandemic was initially \u201claughed off\u201d by athletes at the University of Florida, said a Fletchers Lake soccer star who is in her first year as a Gator. Sydney Kennedy, who arrived home on March 22 and has been in 14-day self-isolation since, described the reaction to the Coronavirus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,957],"tags":[136,306,2,401,993,994,995,996],"class_list":["post-13797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-news","tag-boston","tag-bridget-deveau","tag-fall-river","tag-florida","tag-nevada","tag-nikki-wadden","tag-sydney-kennedy","tag-u-s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}