Quarantine Stories

Ups and downs at home FHN students share their experiences, both the positives and negatives during this unique time of America quarantined due to COVID-19 While enjoying nice family dinners, game nights and movie days with her family, junior Angela Cuccio has also been spending a lot of time on school work. “Even though we moved to online school work,” Cuccio said. ”It doesn’t change the fact that it’s still important for me to do well and succeed.” During quarantine Cuccio has had time to think of all the positives and negatives like family time, school work and being stuck inside. Although she misses school and socializing with her friends, Cuccio thinks that online school will prepare her for college. Cuccio is on the varsity lacrosse team and the team only got to play in the jamboree. “It’s sad to see that all these months of hard work finally paid off just to not be able to play with my best friends who are like my second family,” Cuccio said. (Content by Anna Besancenez) Angela Cuccio

While getting out of the house, sophomore Ryan Reduzzi, has been playing basketball almost everyday, but while inside he is still connecting with his friends. “I have been playing PlayStation with my friends and we can talk through that,” Reduzzi said. “I have also been facetiming my girlfriend since we can’t see each other.” When Reduzzi isn’t playing games with his friends or facetiming his girlfriend, he has been focusing on school work and catching up on some much needed sleep. “I can build my own schedule on when I do school and sleep in,” Reduzzi said. “Most of my work is due at the end of the week anyways.” Ryan Reduzzi

Senior Luke Dempski is making the most out of quarantine by doing things he loves to do. “I have been fishing and finding things to do to keep me sane,” Dempski said. “Since I can’t work at my job right now I’ve been helping my neighbors with their yard work.” The seniors won’t be able to finish out their senior year but Dempski is having a love-hate relationship with not returning back to school. “I like how we have an extended break but it’s really sad and depressing how I don’t get to spend the little time we have with my buddies in school,” Dempski said. Luke Dempski

THE CHRONICLES OF CORONA

From December to now, the world has seen many drastic changes caused by the respiratory virus, Covid-19

(Source: CNN, Infographic by Minnie Adamsl, illustrations by Minnie Adams)

December 31, 2019 - Cases of pneumonia detected in Wuhan, China, are first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO). Virus is unknown at the time.

January 7, 2020 - Chinese authorities confirm that they have identified the virus as a novel coronavirus, initially named 2019-nCoV by the WHO.

January 20, 2020 - The National Institutes of Health announces that it is working on a vaccine against the coronavirus.

January 30, 2020 - The United States reports its first confirmed case of person-to-person transmission of the Wuhan coronavirus. On the same day, the WHO determines that the outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

March 9, 2020 - Giuseppe Conte announces that the whole country of Italy is on lock- down.

March 11, 2020 - The WHO declares the novel coronavirus outbreak to be a pandemic. WHO says the outbreak is the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus.

March 24, 2020 - Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach agree to postpone the Olympics until 2021 amid the outbreak.

April 8, 2020 - China reopens Wuhan after a 76-day lockdown.

HOW HAVE YOU REACTED TO COVID-19?

“I don’t feel anything, I’m kinda having fun, I’m productive.” Sam Smith, 11

“I’ve been playing video games because it is the easiest way to keep sane and interact with my friends.” Blaize Cross, 10

“I’ve tried to adapt to this time by using it to my advantage rather than thinking of it as something that’s holding me back.” Rayan Amir, 11 “I started working out more regularly and spending time with family, but I want to leave the house and talk to see friends.” Lacy Chapman, 10

Equipment used in various spring sports lies unused due to the cancellation of all high school spring sports for this season. The announcement was made earlier in April that all Missouri schools will be closed through the end of the school year including all activities and sports. Spring athletes now face the loss of a season and growth. (Photo by Anna Hollinger)

TRAINING DURING QUARANTINE

Ever since March 13 at the start of spring break, the district announced that school would not resume until April 6. Eventually, they then announced school wouldn’t resume, and all the spring sports practices have been postponed since the start of spring break. Many spring athletes such as senior varsity baseball player Nolan Hutson and senior varsity soccer player Lauren Shah have been staying active and keeping in shape even though their spring sports season won’t resume.

“Right now since it’s been nice out lately we’ve been going for runs or [working on] a treadmill every week, personally I’ve been getting touches on the ball or going for runs, going for walks just trying to do as much as I can,” Shah said. “I know that it’s out of my control but knowing that it’s our senior year it’s pretty sad that you look forward to your senior year, playing your fourth and final year and then knowing that this virus could dictate if you do or not.”

According to Hutson, the varsity baseball team is packed with seniors and has been looking very strong and is very much hoping their season would’ve resumed.

“It sucks since it’s our last season together and it’s our best chance at winning districts but we just got to look at all the positives and not look at the negatives so much.”

Overall, as unfortunate as this pandemic is, seniors are especially sad with this being their final season playing. Though themselves along with all the other athletes mostly plan to just work out as much as they can while in quarantine, even though school won’t continue.

“We have a lot of seniors, so missing out on our last season to play with each other and how most of us have played with each other since we were really young, our last opportunity to play out with each other is what we’re missing out on,” Hutson said. (Brief by Parker Kilen)

On March 25, three close friends on the girls Lacrosse team were struck with the disappointing news that they would not get the opportunity to play with each other again.

“It was devastating that I wasn’t going to be able to play with my best friends because they’re graduating this year,” junior Angela Cuccio said. “We were so pumped for the season.”

This team was dedicated. They scheduled their own practices once or twice a week over the summer up until the end of December of last year. Cuccio, along with her good friend sophomore Catherine Connolly, looked up to senior Heaven-Lee Nichols like a mentor and quickly became close friends similar to that of a family.

“[The biggest let down was] not getting to play with Heavenly,” Connolly said. “She’s like a big sister to me. She was teaching me everything she knew about lacrosse and I never got to play with her then. This was going to be the season [that we played together].

With a team possessing such strong dedication and bonds, these three girls were looking for varsity spots but also looking beyond that. They wanted to dominate the season and continue in college if given the chance.

“Our coaches are trying to do a senior night,” Nichols said. “The girls talked about it and even if the coaches can’t be there, they want to set something up where we can all scrimmage each other and play. I know that with select teams as long as it doesn’t get cancelled they [the coaches] are letting graduated seniors play since they didn’t get a season this year.” (Brief by Liy Taliaferro) TEAM FRIENDSHIP

Q&A WITH ZACH ZIMMERMAN

How do you feel about the cancellation of your volleyball season?

I’m very sad and a little annoyed because I love volleyball and the high school season is fantastic. All the good memories that I got last year, I won’t really be able to have that same experience this year.

How do you keep in touch with the team?

We have a group chat on Snapchat we have been talking about how we would really like to be back in season and about the zoom calls we’ve had. And most of the other times it’s just joking around like memes and stuff like that.

Looking towards the future, what are you excited to see next year?

There are a lot of freshmen that came in and that have some great potential and with juniors that are going to be seniors next year we still have them. So I think we’re going to be pretty good next year.