CK’s Top 10 Sports Stories of 2020: #5 Finding The Positives In COVID-19

There were positives?

Well, it’s hard to imagine, but a lot of wonderful stories of perseverance and training, and attitude, and community mindset came out of COVID-19.

For example, Charles Peet’s Shrewsbury basketball court that allowed local athletes including Bridget Carleton, Maggie Denys, Jana Kucera, Logan Kucera, and Elliot Cowan to continue training.

We saw local athletes, including the Chatham Ballhawks volunteer for The Gift CK.

We found athletes finding ways to stay involved, like at a beach volleyball tournament near Mitchell’s Bay, and the home court fun of Lauren and Kenzie Lahey.

Read any story we told in 2020 after the pandemic started, and you’ll see comments on focus, training, skill development, and goal setting. COVID-19 hurt competition, but it gave athletes the opportunity to do the things we actually ask athletes to do daily, dig deeper, focus, and prove they can overcome.

We got to shift gear away from scores and results, which we have come to understand are already known via social media, and focus more on telling the personal stories, including training and isolation of our local athletes.

For CKSN, it resulted in no change in how many readers clicked to the site, but a change in the behaviour of those who clicked. We found you stayed for longer, read more, and shared more.

We know how to proceed now. When it comes to sports journalism, storytelling is the most important part, and we’re excited to continue this trend, along with sharing some scores, in 2020.