The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone in different ways. For some people it entailed losing their job, for some their job got significantly more chaotic, and for many, it affected their mental health. Today I’m going to take a closer look at how this global pandemic has affected sports including athletes, coaches, and support staff.

As we know, many sporting events have already been cancelled due to COVID-19 such as the Tokyo Olympic Paralympic games and the European Soccer Championships.

In Canada, the Executive Director of the Greater Toronto Hockey League, Canada’s largest and most powerful minor hockey league, says they can no longer pay lip service when it comes to making hockey more affordable. Canada’s billion-dollar youth sports industry has been strongly affected by COVID-19. Many baseball and soccer leagues across Canada have already cancelled their seasons as well.

Some of the reasons sports in Canada are so greatly affected is because many sports are contact sports meaning the athletes will constantly need to be close to and around other players, there is lots of heavy breathing involved in physical activity which will spread germs fast, and many people are struggling with money right now.

For many sports, organizations usually roll over registration fees to the next year, but for this year most have decided to give the full refund back to the family. “There’s so much uncertainty right now, we didn’t think it was the right time to be taking money from families,” Leaside Hockey Association’s president Susan Irving told CBC Sports. “There are a lot of people that are going to be unemployed, especially given we’re going into a recession and we want to do everything we can to make sure that we get all players back on the ice.”

These are only some of the effects that COVID-19 has taken on sports this year, and I’m sure we are all on the same page when I say I hope sporting events can go back to normal soon.