Covid-19 has been extremely hard on everyone, not being able to see family, not being able to have any routine and for most the loss of any physical activity and competitive sport for a long period of time.
I met with the chairman of Sheffield Hallam’s American Football Team Ahmet Karlik; “It’s been awful, a huge outlet for me specifically was taken away. Missing out on so much physical activity per week took an effect on both my physical health and my mental health”.
On top of this Ahmet spoke about how American football had been “left in the dark” with the restrictions and guidelines given out from the government compared to other contact sports making the length they had to weight to get back into physical activity even longer.
Not only has the lack of sport been a struggle but also the lack of information being passed on from the National Governing Body (BAFA) has meant that for long periods of time they were left clueless to what they were allowed and weren’t allowed to do.
When asked what BAFA could have done better this is what Karlik had to say; “They were reactive, not proactive. Other governing bodies were straight to the point when receiving information from the government, for example rugby were back doing contact work 2 months before we were”.
A side from personal things I was interested on how the club had been affected by the multiple lockdowns and lack of engagement with new players, coaches and what impact that had on the team in general. “Numbers wise we were affected massively normally we are a team of 40-60 players and 8-10 coaches but through Covid we were struggling to get 25 people to training sessions.
However, those who did turn up were committed and made massive improvements which will lead to most of them having a starting spot this season”. The biggest worry for the team was financially, “due to there being no season subs weren’t required to pay so incomings were a lot lower than outgoings but luckily we managed to hang on and find cheaper replacements for training facilities”.
Moving past Covid they aim to “build a solid core of players” to allow them to maintain the team for future years and to make sure they achieve a “playoff run consistently in the following years”.
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