Column: Student Ben McCarthy says one positive of the pandemic has been his strong connection with sport. Helping coach a youth football team has provided a timely, welcome distraction from the challenges of remote learning during lockdown.

AS a 16-year old, the next chapter in my life has been rewritten because of the pandemic.

With my education taking an unwelcome twist, I, like so many, clung onto and rediscovered personal passions that helped me break away from the cells of restrictions.

For me, it has been family, expression, writing and sport that have been at the core of my light relief, amid these worrying times.

However, it's been different for everyone and those personal hobbies and interests have been our fuel since March 2020.

Collectively, we've all felt the consequences of coronavirus and, whether it rewrote our schedule, education, work setting or employment, it's hit us one way or another.

Gazette: Ben McCarthy

Columnist Ben McCarthy

We've had to drastically adjust the staple in our lives but some may consider what we'd been offered - reflection, most probably stress or hurt and perhaps time.

During the months of last year’s first lockdown, we were given time to assess what to do going forwards, to learn more about ourselves and how to carve it into the times that laid ahead.

On a personal note, I took the opportunity to help coach a boys' youth football team, woven into my life alongside my dazing, puzzling but now concluded GCSEs as Year 10 was set to become Year 11.

It's proven a magnet of wisdom ever since.

Throughout the turbulence of the past 16 months, the group I've worked with endured an irregular yet extraordinary season.

Their joie de vivre shone beyond the gloom of isolation and lockdown.

These kids, in line with us all, had to concede so many freedoms that formerly spirited their day-to-day routines.

However, the periods of football that could go ahead, from September to October and then April until June, silenced the extreme strain that lockdown gripped us with.

Stanway Villa Under-11 Blues enshrined the excitement and fed the fulfilment for which happiness is pursued.

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Representing the club that next season will mark its 50th anniversary, it energised a division between the world from which we've suffered from and the one we escape to - uniting an urge for delight, determination and competition.

This particular group, led by head coach Steve Shadbolt and assistant coach Mat Wood (alongside myself), were never lacking a hunger to win.

From the season’s start to its eventual end on May 23, they enjoyed an unbeaten run, though that came second to the spirit that was clearly tangible.

Every training session and every match relieved us all of emptiness and was replaced by the feelings we dearly cherish.

The smiles could not be more emphatic and the relief could not be more evident.

As the country finally looks to acquiesce these barriers to normality, we should never shake off what interests, hobbies and traits do to us.

Through many of the challenges of the past 16 months, the power of sport, socialising and recreation have never been so encouraging.

It opens doors to people before they can be closed and gives a voice to our talents, strength and ability before they can be silenced.

Earlier I mentioned the consequences of the pandemic and one of them can be finding the hobby or interest that introduces us to a new and refined life - or even aligned with the life we held before.