This certainly is an unprecedented time in our society, with all the nervousness surrounding the coronavirus pandemic and almost a complete shutdown of the sports we love to watch.

It has affected almost everyone nationwide, as those of us who love to watch the games have tried to fill the void by doing whatever we can to avoid going stir-crazy.

It also has affected how we here at the Tribune are covering sports. You might have noticed that our space isn’t the same as it has been in recent weeks. It has been for good reason, as news of COVID-19 pretty much has taken charge of our needs for space throughout the newspaper.

But it doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop writing about sports, stop trying to reach out to our community in ways that you expect us to. With that, I’d like to outline the things that we have been doing and a couple of things we will be doing going forward.

With the cancellation of the NAIA World Series that hits closer to home, I wanted to see if there was someone, anyone, out in cyberspace who was doing a possible simulation of what the field would look like, how the games would play out and who the eventual champion would be. Lo and behold, I ran into the Twitter account of Scott Hunt, a former University of Cumberland player who has made the trek to Lewiston on more than one occasion to watch his dad’s team take part in the annual rite of May. We reached out to him and he happily obliged. But what it turned out to be was more than just a story about a simulation, it was therapeutic for the entire NAIA baseball community. We received comments from all around thanking us for the promotion of Hunt’s simulation, and his personal story, which included his parents’ home being destroyed by the devastating tornadoes that swept through the Nashville, Tenn., area earlier this month.

We also were interested in finding out how the golf courses would be affected by the pandemic, so we talked to several area golf pros and those who are in charge and found that for the most part, those who want to get outside and enjoy a little bit of physical activity can do so and still follow social distancing guidelines as they have been laid out by the Centers for Disease Control.

We will attempt to do more things like this in the coming days and weeks, including features on athletes who previously have played for the University of Idaho and Washington State University, as well as those current and former athletes who have or are attending Lewis-Clark State College.

But really, the backbone of our coverage, and any coverage at a newspaper of our size, is high school sports. As you certainly are well aware, all Washington interscholastic sports are shut down through the end of April, and Idaho high school sports are on the shelf at least through the middle of next month.

So you ask, what is the Tribune going to do without its bread and butter, its staple of what makes this a good, hometown newspaper? Glad you asked. I have an answer.

As a proud member of Associated Press Sports Editors, a group of those in charge of sports departments in newsrooms far and wide in this country, I’ve been able to reach out to my counterparts, been looking at ways they’ve been framing their coverage in this time of no sports, and the one thing I’ve noticed is they are re-inventing ways of covering high schools without actual game content.

So here’s our plan for the next few weeks: Twice per week, we’re going to profile a senior athlete, or maybe it will be a group of athletes, who quite possibly will have their final chances of competing on the high school fields across our area taken away from them because of something that’s out of their control. For example, we might do a story on an athlete who had the opportunity to go for glory at the state track championship, but now is sidelined because of the coronavirus pandemic. Or it could be a group of several players who are looking to defend their championship in a team sport but because of COVID-19, their dreams could be short-circuited.

Nevertheless, we understand that while features on former standouts in colleges can be fun and entertaining, we also know what’s most important.

One other thing: I am looking to do a virtual town hall or a mailbag type situation where I’ll take reader questions about almost any topic. This could be something that we do on an ongoing basis, depending on the need or possible news of the day. I originally wanted to do an in-person town hall, and wanted to do it coinciding with the opening of Major League Baseball’s season that was supposed to take place today. However, out of abundance of caution, we decided to forgo that option for now.

But this is a way we still can connect to you, take your questions (while we might not necessarily have all the answers) and continue to serve you. So I’m soliciting questions through the sports email address at sports@lmtribune.com, or you can contact me here at work, or on my Twitter account, which is indicated below. I’m looking at doing the virtual town hall/mailbag on Sunday or Monday. I hope to announce this later this week on the paper’s Twitter account, LewTrib_Sports, and on our Facebook account.

And as always, if you have a good story idea, please don’t hesitate to send anything my way. My door always is open (even if, like right now, the actual newspaper offices are not). Until then, we are listening to you.

Walden may be reached at (208) 848-2258, dwalden@lmtribune.com, or on Twitter at @waldo9939.