721 days had passed since the Adrian College tennis team was down in Orlando, Fla. for their annual spring break trip. It had been since my freshman year that I had been able to experience the Florida heat while grinding on the tennis court with the rest of the team. As the tennis team came back on the long drive from Orlando to Adrian two years ago, nobody could have ever seen what was going to happen next. Very shortly after the tennis team returned from spring break two years ago, in fact two years to this week, the entire world was flipped upside down. In late February and early March of 2020 while the tennis team was still in Orlando, we had heard rumblings of this “Coronavirus” starting to sweep through overseas. What we knew about it was very little, and we all didn’t pay too much attention to it. We brushed it off, and when we returned, we had no idea that we were experiencing our last few normal days for a long time.
The virus continued to rapidly spread, and only a few days into the new week coming out of spring break, it seemed more and more like… we would get another week of spring break? That was the large consensus, nobody thought that this coronavirus was here to stay. The news hit in the middle of the week as all of Adrian College returned from spring break, we were going to be doing remote learning for a couple of weeks. Two weeks of not having to go to in person class, who would say no? But as the days went on, and days turned into weeks, it started to become very clear that this wasn’t anything ordinary. Lockdown hit across the globe, and Wednesday, March 11, 2020 will forever be remembered as one of the most infamous months and years of all time. It became quite clear very quickly that we were going to lose the rest of our tennis season, and more than likely the rest of our in-person learning for that school year. Sure enough, we did go online, and obviously all athletics were canceled. It was going to be a long time until the Adrian men’s and women’s tennis team were going to be able to return to Orlando.
That time finally came this spring break. It was a breath of fresh air, all of the upperclassmen on both teams were itching to get back to playing tennis in Orlando. A long and quite strange two years of waiting was over, and the Bulldogs had an action packed week that was well worth the wait. Adrian played 5 matches on the week, winning two of them on both the men’s and women’s side. Head coach Zach Elbin commented that the Orlando trip “is not all about wins and losses” and that he wants the team to improve and that’s what he saw, the team improving. Coach Elbin was also glad to be able to go back down to Florida for the spring break trip, as he remembers the crazy events from two years ago upon the week coming out of spring break. He recalls the events and remembers thinking that this was going to be “a flash in the pan” as pretty much everybody else did as well. But this flash in the plan was here to stay. However the long wait had finally ended, and at least somewhat of ‘normal life’ had returned.
The College World 