Drew Kerekes

Most years I’m writing some sort of year-in-review piece right about now.

Does anyone actually want to look back on 2020? Whether it’s the world of sports or any aspect of life, most people probably feel these last 12 months are best left in the rearview mirror. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are people still awake at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 31 who don’t normally celebrate the flip of the calendar. 

For those people, midnight on Jan. 1 is likely less about the turning over of a new leaf or the start of any New Years resolutions and more about wishing good riddance to such a trying time in our lives. It’s about hope for a better tomorrow, one where COVID-19 is finally under control and we’re able to completely resume the normal routines we had before the coronavirus drastically altered so many lives.

The harsh reality of 2020 is it’s been one of losses, losses that carry far more weight than the ones we see on a scoreboard. Some of us lost loves ones, some of us lost jobs, some of us lost both. Countless suffered from mental health issues. Doctors and nurses in COVID wards at hospitals saw firsthand the horrors the virus has inflicted on those who had to be hospitalized because of it, and the trauma they’ve experienced has to be unimaginably awful. Others were filled with anxiety from not knowing: not knowing if they could avoid getting the virus, not knowing if they would have a job in two weeks, not knowing when they could safely do something so simple yet so profoundly important to the human experience — socialize.

Schools nationwide were shut down in the spring, forcing parents who were still employed to figure out how in the world their children wouldn’t fall behind in their academics while simultaneously trying to provide for said children. As much as I want to be a father one day, I certainly don’t envy parents for what they went through this year.

Tragedy hit close to home this year, too. The Southeast Lauderdale family lost both its former boys soccer coach Mike Thomas and its head football coach, Calvin Hampton. Both were taken from the world too soon, and while my relationship with them was strictly professional, I had known them long enough for those losses to hurt, not just because Thomas and Hampton had always been friendly and personable toward me, but also because I knew how much they meant to their players, fellow coaches and the students and faculty at Southeast Lauderdale.

If tragedy is a spectrum, then the loss of a senior season for spring athletes obviously doesn’t compare to the loss of a loved one. If I were to try to tell a spring athlete who graduated this past May that them losing their senior season just doesn’t matter that much, I’d likely get a well-deserved knuckle sandwich. A pair of conversations stand out to me in this regard, both with people associated with West Lauderdale: Lucy Green and Jason Smith.

Green, now a standout on Ole Miss’ soccer team, was part of the 2019-20 Lady Knights who won a state title in February, before the shutdown. Green expressed in a later interview how grateful she was to finish her senior season, as soccer in the MHSAA concludes in February, before most of us even knew what the virus was. Smith, West Lauderdale’s baseball coach, told me after his season got canceled that a trip to the Gulf Coast to face a pair of Class 6A opponents, Biloxi and Brandon — the Knights won both games — had him feeling good about his team’s chances of winning the 4A title in May. Thanks to spring sports being canceled before the conclusion of their seasons, he’ll never know if that was his 2020 squad’s ceiling.

As the calendar mercifully changes to 2021, I’m left only with hope for the future. I hope the latest wave of the virus begins to decline and that the vaccine can be distributed to the general population as quickly as possible. I hope we continue to find more effective ways to treat COVID-19. I hope schools can remain open safely and that winter and spring sports seasons can run their course with minimal, if any, hiccups.

Most of all, I hope 2020 emboldens us to realize that we’re so much stronger, so much smarter, so much more capable than we often give ourselves credit. I hope we become more compassionate. I hope we learn to appreciate more the good things we used to give little more than a passing thought. 

I hope 2021 is a much happier year for us all than 2020 was. I would say just about any year would look good compared to 2020, but then I’d probably be jinxing it — and I don’t even believe in jinxes.

Drew Kerekes is the sports editor at The Meridian Star. He can be reached at dkerekes@themeridianstar.com.