Amid virus, teams manage to connect away from the field
By Travis McGuire
Addie Klindt ’23 is lucky. She’s a two-sport student-athlete, so she was able to complete her fall season on the women’s soccer team. Many of her spring teammates in the track and field program were not as fortunate. More than 100 Linfield meets, tournaments, matches and games were canceled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s almost surreal because it was just so unexpected,” said Klindt. “You work so hard and you build a bond with your teammates, and then have to let that go so suddenly. It was really disheartening.”
Klindt wanted to stay connected to her teammates after she returned home to The Dalles to finish the spring semester online. The bond she formed with them motivated her to create something that would bring joy to her team.
After seeing other Linfield athletic teams share videos featuring student-athletes, Klindt decided to do something similar. She collaborated with 16 teammates to make a video for the popular social media platform TikTok. The short video features a pair of track shoes being passed from one teammate to the next to the tune of Kenny Loggins’ “Footloose.” All the videos were filmed at the students’ homes and pieced together on TikTok.
“We just loved to see it all finished after working on it for days and for other people to see a whole track team coming together,” Klindt said.
It’s not just the student-athletes who are missing each other.
Even when Steve Simmons, head women’s soccer coach, wasn’t in season, he used to see his players on a daily basis in either the HHPA building or on his daily walk to Starbucks. Those in-person connections halted in mid-March, so he switched to video calls.
“I try to at least meet with each player via FaceTime,” he said.
Those calls happen once every two weeks for most of the team, and weekly for his four seniors: “I want to see their faces and see how they’re doing.”
The team is also split into four groups, and those students stay in touch with each other through video conferencing platforms. They meet and train together online.
It’s not the same, but it’s something. “Selfishly, I want to see my team,” Simmons said.
“We just loved to see it all finished after working on it for days and for other people to see a whole track team coming together.”
– Soccer and track athlete
Addie Klindt ʼ23 on producing a team TikTok video
