VALDOSTA, Georgia -- On most mornings in early August, Jake Garcia would wake up in the furnished apartment he shares with his dad, Randy, at 5 a.m., have breakfast and then drive over to Valdosta High School for a 5:45 a.m. practice.
Jake and his dad had to share a rental car, so they did pretty much everything together. Meanwhile, Jake's mother, Yvonne, was more than 2,300 miles away in the family's home in Whittier, California.
That's where Jake lived until about five weeks ago, when the California Interscholastic Federation, the state's governing body for high school sports, announced that football season would be delayed until at least December because of the coronavirus pandemic, effectively ending Garcia's senior season before it started.