by Payne Schanski
Site Director, Tennis Coordinator, Curley K-8 School, Jamaica Plain
Day 29-April 14
Diego Maradona
What does an Argentinian soccer legend from three decades ago have to do with a quarantined youth development organization in Boston? Absolutely nothing, at least until last Tuesday.
Drawing inspiration from Maradona’s unofficial ‘Greatest Warmup of All-Time’ before a 1989 UEFA Cup semi-final match, I kept my laces untied, put on Opus’s “Live is Life” as background music, and had a lot of fun making the trick shot rally video.
None of my students got the reference, none of my co-workers got it, and I suspect that anyone else who came upon the video didn’t fully get it either. Even so (or maybe because of that), the Maradona Edition is the crown jewel of the solo tennis video collection so far.
Day 36-April 21
Early Graduation
Towards the end of a rapid-fire morning of four video conferences in a two-hour stretch, I had the TV on in the background and saw Governor Baker enter the screen. His message from the podium was straightforward, something that people paying attention over the last few weeks could probably see coming. The closure of all schools in the state had been extended until the end of the school year.
I thought back to March, when he first announced that schools would be closing temporarily, and about how much has changed since then. At the time, his statement was a complete shock, something I never would have imagined happening in my lifetime. Fast forward six weeks, and I shrugged and chalked it up as just confirmation of the inevitable; no surprise this time.