By Senior club president Emilio Bautista sits at home preparing workouts online for his fellow Jiu-Jitsu Club members.
The highly physically club sport has transitioned from in-person training to Instagram posts amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“What we’ve been doing for the moment is posting stories [on Instagram] of what to do and tagging club members so they can try it, like the push challenges people have been doing,” senior mechanical engineering major Bautista said.
Combat sports like jiu-jitsu require body-to-body contact. The isolation has presented challenges for the club, but it is adapting.
“Our goal is to provide a routine where you wouldn’t need a partner, but would still be useful in combat sports,” Bautista said. “We may post fundamental jiu-jitsu techniques that can be done alone on our Instagram page. We’ve done this before and called it Technique Tuesdays, so we might bring it back.”
Although Bautista said he will still remain active with Jiu-Jitsu Club members after his time a student is over, senior club president Sydney Carpentier of the Women’s Rowing Club may not have the same opportunity.
Carpentier is graduating this semester and the women’s rowing races for the spring have all been canceled. But that hasn’t stopped Carpentier from staying in touch with her club.
“A couple of us have been Zooming each other to do workouts together,” Carpentier said. “We also have a group chat that we use to share different ways to workout from home without weights.”
Carpentier, a psychology major, has been a member of the Women’s Rowing Club since her freshman year and was looking forward to competing in her final season.
“Along with the other seniors on the team, we are very torn up about losing out on our final season that we had been working towards for years,” Carpentier said. “ [But] we are staying positive for the rest of the team.”
Some club members were more fortunate due to sports schedules.
The CSULB Ice Hockey Club was able to finish its season Feb. 7, about a month before the university’s spring sporting events were canceled. Senior captain and starting goalie Adam Moroz was glad he was able to complete his final season.
“Having been through all these seasons with these guys means a lot to me, so if I didn’t have the chance to finish it out and help them get closure on the year, and closure on some of their careers, that would’ve been upsetting for sure,” Moroz, a senior physics major, said.
The coronavirus was making headlines and causing panic in other countries during the hockey season, but it hadn’t affected the United States as it is now, though, so Moroz thought nothing of it.
“I think we sort of knew about the virus, but it was still in its early stages at that point,” Moroz said. “I don’t think anyone thought it would come to this.”
