There are a lot of things that get on my nerves, but the top spot has got to be hypocrisy. Consistency in leadership is something that is very important to me. I hate to see leadership talk about how important COVID-19 is, and then do things that don’t align with their statement. I don’t have a problem with us having events on campus, but if you’re going to do some, you can afford to do all.
In case you don’t know, NSU ruled that they wouldn’t be allowing club sports to compete with other schools. Instead, club sports play once a week for a couple of hours. In addition, they also aren’t allowing intramural flag football or soccer, using COVID-19 as the reason. Now, there may be no flag football or soccer for the entire year. I don’t agree with this, especially considering the events that have taken place on campus.
“Hey, I have a great idea. Let’s have pool parties and consistent events on campus, including Sharkapalooza.” The line to enter the beginning of the semester event stretched from Gessner Field all the way to the parking garage with zero space in between people. Those lines really followed social distancing. Waterworks was great, too. Nothing says “we care about COVID” like an event that is basically impossible to wear a mask. We can do all these things, but we can’t play certain sports; games that have a limited number of people on the field. What sense does that make?
The reason I’m so upset is because they’re offering 4v4 sand volleyball. There’s no difference in those three sports from a COVID-19 standpoint. A sport like football has seven players on each team, and with masks enforced, there would be no problem. Soccer also involves seven players on each team, though just two players touch the ball with their hands. Volleyball has minimum of eight players touching a singular ball in a much smaller space. I don’t see how volleyball got the okay over football.
I play sports very often, and in my freshman year at NSU, I played both intramural flag football and soccer. It was my favorite extracurricular activity at school. For NSU to say that we can’t play football or soccer because of COVID restrictions and then allow us to play volleyball just makes no sense. There is absolutely zero consistency.
