The Breeze JMU’s award-winning newspaper since 1922
APRIL 14, 2022 VOL. 100 NO.26 BREEZEJMU.ORG
JMU’s tennis ace returns home By CRAIG MATHIAS The Breeze
When the JMU men’s tennis schedule was being put together before the season, junior Holden Koons was asked by head coach Steve Secord if he had a preference of where to play a late-year match. The match’s site had to be near Penn State, where the April 17 regularseason finale is. Wi s e have n Te n n i s C e nt e r i n Yo rk, Pennsylvania — Koons’ home club for the majority of his childhood — immediately came to mind, and Koons said he got Secord in contact with Phil Myers, head tennis pro at Wisehaven and close friend of Koons, to work out the details. “Coach Secord had asked [me] about any ideas [where] to play a match before [playing] Penn State,” Koons said, “so the first thing I did was reach out to [Myers] to ask about the possibility, and he was on board. I think it’ll be a good thing for the club to get to see some high-level tennis right there at Wisehaven.” After concluding both home and CAA match play, Koons is homeward-bound for the Dukes’ second-to-last match of the season against Morgan State, a match he said has a different meaning to him. This spring, Koons is 17-1 while playing No. 1 singles and is 6-0 in CAA competition. An 11-match win streak has propelled him to his record prior to JMU’s penultimate match against the Bears. When he was approached with the idea of a JMU match at Wisehaven, Myers said, he was excited. He said he made sure to clear the club’s schedule for this date and did everything in his power to make sure the match would happen. “I was all for it,” Myers said. “I checked the schedule, blocked the date out to make sure nothing else conflicted, and it ended up working great … I was willing to make it work no matter what it took to get that level of tennis to be played in York County, probably for the first time ever.” Myers and Koons’ relationship goes back before coming together to host a JMU match at Wisehaven. Myers helped build the foundation for Koons’ career when he was in middle school as they trained together after Koons got out of school every day, Myers said. The tennis pro has been following the team since they were set to host the match and said he’s pleased to see everything come full circle with the team around Koons. “It is a great feeling to have it all come back around,” Myers said. “We’re really looking forward to hosting the team … It seems like he’s in a great place, it seems like they’re all good guys, and it seems that the team culture is fantastic. We’re really excited to be doing this and we’re looking forward to Friday night.”
see COMING HOME, page 25
Photo illustration by Anna Gould
Opinion | To mask or not to mask? JMU is ready to make masks optional By EMMA SELI compromising controversy
Since its appearance in late 2019, COVID-19 has run the world; it has determined the fate of not only people’s everyday lives, but of global economies and governments as well. However, it seems people are finally taking back their lives, starting with the end of mask mandates. The debate over masking in schools, specifically K-12 schools, is multifaceted and difficult to tackle. Masking is no longer simply determined by medicine and medical professionals, it’s also determined by politicians and the general public. As mask mandates in schools (both schools and universities) are rolled back
across the country, masking is becoming a personal decision rather than a requirement by state and federal government — and it should stay that way. In an email to the JMU community on April 6, the JMU Office of the President announced that masks will be optional in indoor spaces with a few exceptions, starting on April 11. Masks will still be required in clinics, on public transportation, in private offices and when specific contractual obligations apply. In the message, Alger explains his decision, noting the low number of cases at JMU and in the Harrisonburg area. see OPTIONAL, page 10
JMU should’ve kept the mask mandate By LUKE PINEDA direct discourse
We have now entered the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic and not much has changed. Although COVID-19 case numbers on campus are drastically low, this doesn’t mean we should remove masks from classrooms and other learning spaces. JMU announced in an April 6 email that it would move to make masks mandatory only in health centers, other medicalrelated facilities and on public transportation. JMU has since made an official update to its COVID-19 policy webpage stating the various new situations and spaces that don’t require the usage of a mask. The university
is imposing a policy change that excludes the comfort of students who still want to mask. This new policy seems to view JMU and Rockingham County as within its own bubble, separate from the rest of the state or other neighboring communities. In the email sent by President Alger last week regarding the new policy change, some interesting perspectives and reasoning for the removal of the mask mandate in classrooms were offered. The university started by thanking those who have followed CDC guidelines to get to the point where it can remove a mask mandate for classroom settings. see MANDATE, page 10