After a long day at school, the student-athletes are rushing to the bathroom to be the first to change for practice due to the global pandemic that hit the world. To prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus, Cherokee Trail High School has shut down their locker rooms for the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year. “It’d be pretty hard to regulate mask wear where there is not very much supervision,” said Abby Snogren (12), a senior cross country captain.
Since there are no locker rooms, students have had to find different ways to change and still be on time for practice. For Campbell Faust (12), her method has a lack of privacy. “I decide to change in my car, so I don’t have to wait in line. There is a lack of privacy, but it’s not that bad,” said Faust. But not all students choose to change in their cars; others come to school in their workout clothes or change in the school’s bathroom. The students in weight training or other PE classes chose to wear their clothes the whole day. “One of the biggest disadvantages of not having a locker room is hygiene. The whole point of change is to make sure students go to their next class, not in the gear they work out in,” said Mrs. Elizabeth Creamer, one of the weight training teachers at CT.
Since so many students have to change in the bathrooms, it can be very chaotic. It is undoubtedly not how Jostyn Farrell (9), a freshman on the cross country team, thought her first year would be. She doesn’t have a car, so she chooses to change in the bathroom. “You have to wait in line to get to a stall, and then the stalls are super tiny. You’re trying not to drop things,” said Farrell. The school closed all the bathrooms except for the main one in the commons.
For some students, it’s more about the locker room environment rather than the space to change and a place to store your stuff. “I feel like there was a lot of team bonding that went on in the locker room, and also on days where it could be like a leggings day or shorts day, we all usually talk together to figure out what we are wearing, but now we can’t,” said Snogren. The locker room was used to find what to wear for practice and to hang with the team.
Whether it is hygiene, a place to change, store your stuff, or figure out what to wear for practice, the locker room had a specific purpose. As they adapt to the new normal, the student athletes need to find new methods to overcome the problems they now face.