Students and student athletes alike are excited about sports returning in full swing this fall at Elizabethtown College. In the spring 2021 semester, sports did take place, but things were a little different with COVID-19 restrictions.
The NCAA restricted the number of spectators that could attend a game or did not allow them at all. They also required all athletes to wear masks indoors and outdoors and administered weekly COVID tests to athletes.
With most of our campus now vaccinated, mask restrictions have become more lenient, and athletes are no longer required to wear masks outdoors. Indoor sports such as volleyball and basketball also do not have to wear masks while actively participating in a game. Sophomore cross country runner Grant Kuhn is skeptical and hopeful that when indoor track season starts, he will not have to wear a mask in his official timed events.
Kuhn is also grateful to be able to practice and run at meets outdoors without a mask. “It is a lot harder to breathe in a mask as a runner because you can’t take a deep breath at all.”
The cross country team is once again able to compete with and run against local schools who are outside of the Landmark Conference. During the spring semester the team was restricted to only competing against other teams in the conference. This is a big deal because many of the local schools Etown competes against are not in the Landmark Conference. Franklin & Marshall College, Alvernia University and York College are all very close to Etown, but were not options for the cross country team to run against last spring.
Kuhn is also happy to be able to use the cross country team’s new locker room in the Bowers Center. As a sophomore this is his first semester being able to use the new facilities since the team had no access to them in the 2020-2021 academic year. “A lot of the guys on the team use the showers in the locker room and it’s really nice being able to store stuff there.”
The Etown cross country team has won the Landmark Conference title seven out of the last eight years. Kuhn is looking forward to the opportunity of adding one more conference win to the team’s history this season.
