Wearing a mask while playing a sport, because of COVID-19, is not the ideal situation for most athletes. There have been many restrictions made for all sports and athletes participating in them. Most athletes have to wear their face mask throughout their practices and during their meets, matches, games, et cetera.
According to “The Conversation,” written by Lindsay Bottoms, wearing a face mask while performing at a high level makes it much harder to inhale the amount of air needed when exercising. With low to moderate intensity exercise, effort may feel harder to put in, but it should not be too uncomfortable. High-intensity workouts or sports, where athletes take in air at rates of about 40-100 litres per minute, may find wearing a mask during exercise problematic.
Not only can wearing a face mask be dangerous, it can also be very uncomfortable and distracting if you are not used to it while exercising.
“My mask distracts me in between shots for golf because it gets pretty itchy and uncomfortable,” freshman Ethan Frasch said.
While golf has a relatively low intensity, running is a highly intense exercise and usually results in runners needing to breathe out of their mouth. During cross country, face masks can be distracting and make the participant perform poorly.
“My mask makes it hard to do any skills during cross country because it gets in the way and makes it more difficult to breathe clearly,” junior Alexa Philips said. “It distracts me a lot because I am always fixing it and it makes it hard to understand people.”
Although there are some flaws with face masks, many high school athletes are happy that they are still able to proceed in their beloved sport. A lot of people are excited to see what the rest of this year brings and are ready to get back into regular scheduled sports and practices.
