Lachlan was home-schooled while growing up, so he has previous experience with a sense of isolation.
“I never had a very conventional upbringing,” admitted the fifth-year veteran of the Eskimos Cheer Team. “I’m finding that I’m still accomplishing a lot because I grew up for the first 18 years of my life doing a lot of work from home.
“I’ve had about five years off it, but now I’m back into a normal swing.”
One benefit of the recent shift in the world created by the COVID-19 pandemic is that it’s the first time since 2010 that all four members of Lachlan’s family have been in the same city for an entire month. Lachlan’s brother, Brendan, has temporarily returned to Edmonton from his full-time home in Los Angeles.
“My family is really close, so it’s a good time,” said Lachlan, who had moved to Vancouver for four years and to California for two years with his mother and brother while Brendan was trying to establish himself as an actor. His father remained in Edmonton to work, but still managed to fly to those locations to be with the rest of the family “50-per-cent of the time.”
On the other hand, the current stance on social distancing has created a huge void in Lachlan’s lifestyle. Lachlan is a base for the Stunt Team, but also has the Canadian national team and Perfect Storm Athletics, a local cheerleading club where he coaches participants between the ages of six and 18 on four different teams.
“Among all the teams I was on, I was probably putting in at least 10 hours of practice a week and probably 20 to 25 hours of coaching, so it’s quite a change,” he said. “I’m happy that I have something to do. I’d be going a little crazy if I didn’t have something to do.”
Lachlan is still able to work for the family business. Before his parents’ optometrist clinic had to close because of COVID-19, he would often do the pre-testing as an optometrist assistant, serve as a receptionist or work as the office manager, creating schedules and taking care of orders.
“It keeps me busy,” he said about his current role, which includes answering 20 to 30 phone calls each day. “I just have a phone in my pocket and whenever it rings, I answer it. So we’ve got the office … (ringing sound) … and there goes the phone.”
After returning to this call, Lachlan said: “Basically, we’ve moved all of our contact lens supply to our house and I still answer the phone and I still sell contacts. Depending upon what type they are, if they aren’t able to be delivered to the person, we just drive them out and drop them off on their doorstep, basically.
“Any medical information or anything like that, I just have to pass the phone off to my father, who’s the doctor.
“Most of the deliveries where we actually grab the contacts and deliver them have been to the front-line workers. Obviously, they need them and we don’t want to put them in any kind of a hassle of having to leave the house other than for the important things they have to do.
“So we sanitize them before we drop them off at their door and then give them a call and say, ‘Hey, we left them outside.’ ”
Lachlan, who will celebrate his 23rd birthday this week, got involved with cheerleading after he quit doing gymnastics about 11 years ago. A home-school friend told him, ‘Oh, you’ve got to come and try cheerleading.’
“Obviously, at first, I was like, ‘Ah, no!’ ” he recalled. “And then she convinced me to go to a practice and I basically fell in love with the sport. I pretty much dedicate all of my time that isn’t working towards it right now.”
Most of that time is spent coaching, which he does for four or five hours a day six days a week.
“I work with my parents from 10 or 11 a.m. until 3 p.m., depending upon the day,” he said. “Then I go directly from the office or if I’m working from home to coaching cheerleading and I usually start around 4 p.m.”
Two of the Perfect Storm teams he coaches were entered in a competition in Arizona in mid-March.
“The competition got cancelled the day everyone left,” Lachlan said. “A lot of the coaches who were on their way down were stuck in Calgary, basically going, ‘Oh, oh, I don’t want to get on my Phoenix flight because the competition isn’t happening.’
“And then the travel advisory was put in three days later.”
Lachlan didn’t attempt to go to Arizona because he had a Team Canada training camp in London, Ont., that week.
“They cancelled the practice about seven hours before my flight took off, so that was nice,” he said. “I didn’t have to go to the airport, but we were completely packed up and ready to go.”
Team Canada was supposed to have four sessions in London and eight more practices in Florida before the world championship in Orlando at the end of April. That championship has been since postponed until a later date.
“We basically had the last month-and-a-half of our season gearing up,” Lachlan said. “That’s when the most amount of practise goes in.”
Lachlan added that working with the Cheer Team is “pretty much the most genuine fun cheerleading that I’ve done in my life. There’s pretty much never a negative day.”