Mounds View’s students are well known for their academic success, frequently receiving scholarships for their educational attainments. However, many Mounds View students also depend on athletic scholarships as a means of making college more affordable. When the coronavirus pandemic first canceled high school sports last spring, it left many students in flux.
Following the cancelation of many athletics programs, inevitable changes to sports scholarships followed. Scholarships did not fall through, but college visits and recruiting that typically took place in-person moved online.

[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”29″ display=”basic_imagebrowser”]Photos By Brian Franz

One benefit of the cancelation of college sports was that it allowed coaches to focus on future seasons and high school athletes. ‘‘You know, a lot of [college] coaches didn’t have training or games this spring, they spent a lot more time on recruiting,’’ said football coach, Aaron Moberg. However, despite more scouting, many athletes were not able to showcase their improvements without spring sports.

Summer training was also severely limited as typical sports camps were canceled, something Moberg feels will have a minimal long-term impact on graduating seniors going on to play college sports, despite the fact that these camps are often the starting point for many college recruiters.

For now, even cautiously arranged games may not be enough to maintain a safe season and no one knows how long it will take for athletics programs to return to normal. ‘‘For right now, it’s kind of a day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month with school, with regular life, with sports, and so a lot of [next year’s sports programs] will be determined by where we are, as a country, with COVID, in a year from now,’’ said Moberg.