Editor’s Note: Over the next weeks and months, Emmaussports.com will be spotlighting senior spring sports student-athletes at Emmaus High School who have had their final athletic year cancelled due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Today we spotlight Bryan Bertsch (BB) of the boys track and field team with our Q & A session:
Q: How are you coping during these difficult and uncertain times with the Coronavirus pandemic?
BB: For me, personally, I cope with stuff like this simply by doing what I have the motivation to do. Yes, there are a few things that must get done such as school work and chores but for the most part, it is about me keeping my family and I happy.
Q: What’s been the biggest challenge for you day to day?
BB: The biggest challenge for me has been finding something new to do each day. There is only so much one can do while stuck at home for the whole day and night and the challenge is to make that as fun and interesting as possible. Sometimes it does feel good to fall into a routine and watch a few movies for hours on end or take a nap more than once in a day but outside of those few occurrences, I try to do at least one new thing a day keeping things as interesting as they can be.
Q: What are you doing to keep busy?
BB: Keeping busy kind of intersects with that challenge above, for me, the most important thing is to stay mentally busy, yes, staying physically active is an ideal I wish to keep but without a place to go and be active such as the gym or basketball court, it has been increasingly harder to stay physically active. However, that has not stopped my mind from being busy, every day I try and find something new to look into, whether that be a front-page article on Reddit or something that popped up in the newspaper I almost always have something to look into that could last me a days worth of time keeping my mind busy.
Q: Now that the spring sports season has been cancelled, how disappointed are you?
BB: Honestly, disappointed isn’t really the word I would use. If you remember back to the podcast myself and few others on the football team did on “Inside Emmaus Sports” I remember a similar question being asked about my ankle injury and if I was disappointed about possibly missing the rest of my senior season, and the answer there is kind of the same here. I am not really disappointed, I understand why the decision was made to cancel not only the sports but school as well and honestly, I’m focusing more on what the future holds as opposed to what could have been.
Q: What will be your favorite memory from your high school sports career?
BB: I have a few. The first goes back to my junior year in the spring, my first time trying track and field. This isn’t really a specific moment, but that season, the people I met the things that I and the rest of the team accomplished was absolutely awesome and all in all, made me incredibly happy that I tried something like track.
As for more of a specific moment, as weird as this may sound, after our loss to Freedom in the football playoffs this past season. Those feelings, the emotions that I saw from people who honestly, I never thought would show emotion like that, everything that happened that night wrapped up something that was truly special. The bond was deeper than blood, and it wasn’t just the seniors, every class from that season was so incredibly tight-knit with themselves and the rest of the team, going even further there was a mostly new coaching staff, and even with that, our bond never faltered, we were and still are brothers through and through.
Q: What are you future plans after high school? If college, what school have you committed to and do you plan on playing sports and what will be your major?
BB: I’ll be attending Penn State University where I plan on studying Aerospace Engineering along with participating in the Air Force ROTC program. What I want to do out of college is to be a pilot in the Air Force and the end game for me would be to become an astronaut. As for sports, right now it doesn’t look like I will be doing anything outside of maybe a club sport but who knows, maybe I’ll try my hand and walk-on to a sport while there.
Q: What’s the best advice you can give to your underclassmen?
BB: The advice that I have for underclassmen is simple. No matter what happens, no matter where you go or what you do, you will always have a choice, there is no set path for anyone. You can do anything and it is up to you to make that choice for yourself. So figure it out, you have time but eventually figure it out, and once you do, once you figure out the path that is meant for you, don’t just sit there. Stand up and walk, stand up and run down that path. You are strong enough to make it down your own path and once you make it to the end of your path, both you and the rest of the world will be better for it.