For many of our Mustangs, the countdown for their sports season begins the minute the whistle blows the previous year. Unfortunately for our class of 2023, 2022, and 2021, they will be snubbed a spring season, and for our class of 2020, they will not get to step onto the field, court or in the swimming pool one last time.

During the week of March 9, the Placentia Yorba Linda Unified School District announced that they will be indefinitely suspending this year’s spring sports because of the coronavirus. These sports included softball, baseball, men’s swim, women’s swim, men’s lacrosse, women’s lacrosse, men’s volleyball, men’s golf, men’s tennis, men’s track and field, and women’s track and field. 

This news is obviously affecting all of our spring athletes, but this announcement is specifically hurting our seniors. Some seniors will not be playing their sport at their prospective college and none of them could have ever imagined that their last game was their last game. 

They will never be able to have their last pregame meal, the last dance party in the team locker room, the last team picture day to show their children all of the posed buddy shots. They will not get their last handshake with their best friend or their last coin-toss with their team captains. Most importantly, they will not get to walk down the field with parents to celebrate the years of hard work they have put into their sport on their senior night.

Sports for seniors mean so much and Makenzie Stanley (12) says that “track and field have always been her place of freedom.” Stanley continues to look through the bright side of things and says that “the beginning of her season was exactly what she wanted.” She says that she was “able to get new PRs in all of [her] events and [she] placed in every dual meet and invitational we had.” The “program will always hold a special place in [her] heart.”

Senior Tanner Fitch (12) and the men’s lacrosse team have been practicing many hours and late nights and “thought this was the year [they] could take it all and [they] were disappointed what [they] could possibly never play as a team again.” Fitch was “excited to play with [his] best friends for this last year and was devastated to hear that it was taken away.”

Not only has this devastating news taken a season away from our seniors, but many of our freshmen are losing the chance of their first year of playing a sport. Freshman, Clare Johnson (9) says that “having our season canceled was some of the saddest news we had all heard and it was terrible knowing that we had been training all year long and never got to experience a real league game.”

The coronavirus has obviously all taken a toll on all of us, but if this news has taught us anything it is to never take your time in the pool, field, or court for granted. As an athlete myself, this feeling of having an entire season ripped away from me is absolutely heart wrenching and from all of the fall and winter Mustang athletes, we are here with you.