This story initially appeared on Behind the Whistle, the official blog of the IWLCA, and is being republished with permission from the organization. Brandon Davis is the head coach at Georgetown College Athletics.

So how about that COVID, right?

The last nine months have thrown us all for a loop. As a household with two people making a living in athletics, there’s been plenty of stress. It has, however, shown us how much people can handle. As coaches, we are responsible for helping our young adults get to whatever the next step might be. Whether its medical school, the workforce, starting a family, or moving to the wilderness and living off the grid. This spell has been especially difficult since no one has ever gone through anything like this. We can’t relate to some experience we went through in our playing days. We can’t rely on the teachings of our former coaches.

With all that said, I am still so very thankful that I have this community of coaches; that even though we are competitors, we can lean on each other to help in all these new situations.

Most of the people reading this are familiar with the concept of using a slogan to try and set a standard or tempo for the season. After everything we went through last spring with COVID-19, as well as major injuries and other setbacks, I spent a lot of time trying to come up with one this summer. I was really struggling with finding something that I felt everyone in the program, from our three-year starter and returning captain all the way down to our freshman social media manager, would feel deep in their bones.

One day I was listening to a podcast on the way home from a recruiting event and the guest said something that stuck with me. The next day, I’m scrolling through social media and someone posted the same quote for their #MotivationMonday. Now I’m really thinking about it. That night, I walk into my strength coach’s office to talk about a possible idea. It’s really convenient since she’s also my wife. As I start to bring up my idea for a slogan, something she had been trying to help me with, I see the quote again. She had been on a Zoom call with a group of young professionals she regularly speaks with, and someone else had said it. My wife had written it down and posted it on her desk.

I don’t know what it was, but I knew I was hearing it for a reason. “Strong storms make trees take deeper roots,” originally said by Julia Kern. I knew I had to do something with it. At this point, we had all been trying to figure out how to continue working with our student-athletes for about four months now. A profession that is normally very good at planning and logistics, suddenly couldn’t prepare. We knew this season was going to be different than anything we had ever done before, and if a storm was going to keep hitting us for who knows how long, we only had one option: “Dig In.”

Every day I see this mentality and am amazed as I watch what people are doing to try to keep some sort of semblance of a normal life. When we have recruits or visitors on campus, I like to brag about how lucky I am to be surrounded by the people I interact with. Because of what we have seen in the last nine months, I have more examples to give than I will ever be able to remember.

So, thank you to the medical staff for helping the coaches keep our student-athletes safe. Right now, sports are one of the few normal things that students get to enjoy, and you keep finding ways to let them still do that. To the contact tracing team, I don’t envy you having to dig into peoples’ activities and make judgement calls that no one wants to make. It’s a job no one wants to do, but you still signed up, knowing it had to be done. The faculty at the College, as well as all educators around the world — the way you’ve been taught to do your job, and everything you know about it was changed overnight. You didn’t skip a beat. Taking classes online, then even when we came back to campus, you still had to change how you educated the next generation of professionals. To our STEM professors and pre-Med program, what you are capable of still baffles me. You wanted to make sure that every person on our campus had access to quick, but more importantly, accurate testing. So, what did you do? You devised your own saliva test that is just as accurate as the rapid testing at a walk-in clinic.

Most importantly, thank you to the 25 fantastic young women who show me every day what someone is capable of when they work for something they want. Someday, we will forget the nasal and temp testing; we will forget not being able to use a locker room and having to wipe down every piece of equipment after we use it in the weight room. However, I will not forget how you went through all of this without skipping a beat. I’d like to think that we’ve given you a place to get away from everyday stresses, but I know for a fact that you have given one to me.

You’ll never know how thankful I really am.