THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – Friday, April 3, 2020 Page 11 Lacrosse, tennis teams still hopeful for season By Greg Phipps A fter falling short of postseason bids last season, the Saugus High School boys’ lacrosse and girls’ tennis teams are anxious to try and improve on their 2019 campaigns. After Gov. Charlie Baker last week ordered schools in the state to remain closed until May 4, it appeared any chance for a spring sports season is in jeopardy. On Monday, hope was kept alive when the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) voted unanimously to open the season on May 4, with regular-season games to commence on May 11. The Saugus girls’ tennis team came close to making the postseason last year. They missed a tournament bid by one match and finished fourth in the Northeastern Conference with a .500 record in league play. The Sachem girls made the tournament in 2018. With seven team victories in 2019 under head coach Kristen Gerety, Saugus is bolstered THE PANDEMIC AND BASEBALL By Th e Old Sachem B Sophomore No. 2 girls’ tennis player Cadence Callahan is hoping to build on her productive 2019 performance. (Courtesy photo) this season by top player and league all-star junior Lanna Queiroz, who missed a good deal of last season due to a wrist injury. Also, sophomore Cadence Callahan returns after being last season’s No. 2 singles player. Saugus lost four seniors but are returning several of their regular singles and doubles players from last year. The boys’ lacrosse team hopes to improve on a 7-9 fi nish in 2019, where they were in the playoff hunt pretty much till the end. Forward Joe Cross and goalie Derek Martineau are among the returning players who hope to get a chance to play this spring. efore I get to baseball, I think you should know how this happened before I go to our major professional sports. The sports are carried in a further section. Our nation has seen this scene before – the Spanish fl u in 191819, the Kennedy assassination, the Loma Prieta earthquake, 9/11 and the SARS virus to name a few. To understand what might happen with the coronavirus we take a look at a similar situation. The Spanish fl u is fi rst mentioned in an April 5, 1918, weekly public health report that listed 18 severe cases and three deaths in Haskell, Kansas. More than 100 soldiers at Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas, came down with the disease, and within a week the number of fl u cases quintupled. In May hundreds of thousands of soldiers travelled across the United States to be deployed to Europe during World War I. These troopers probably spread the disease wherever they went – the East Coast, England, then France. The pandemic would BASEBALL | SEE PAGE 16
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