BERKELEY, Calif. — In any other year, they would be on campus, practicing with their teams, sweating and laughing and bonding with new teammates, preparing for a school year and a season to start.
But this is 2020, so the 200 incoming freshman student-athletes at the University of California, Berkeley, were nothing but a grid of pixelated faces on a screen, boxed in. They were at home, mostly, on beds or couches or at desks or kitchen tables. It was orientation, but no one felt oriented.
All the fall sports seasons had been canceled, with vague hopes of competing in the spring.