Lisa Sparrow learned that Omaha might as well be Osaka. That seven-and-a-half hours by car can feel like seven-and-a-half light years, even from the comfort of your couch.

“Fans are a necessary part of sports,” said Sparrow of her Pioneers, who played their first 10 games in Omaha as part of an NHL-style “bubble” environment.  “Denver hockey, our record (3-6-1) is totally because our hockey team thrives on the energy from the students and the fans.”

She misses the tribe. The vibe. The way the butter off the popcorn at Magness Arena tickles your nose. The way shared colors turn strangers into family, if even for only a few hours.

“One of the reasons we celebrate sports is because we really feel like it’s a community … we’re part of a group,” noted Adam Earnheardt, a Youngstown State communications professor and author of “Sports Fans, Identity and Socialization: Exploring the Fandemonium.’ “And if we can’t be a part of that group and we feel like we’re isolated from that group, what’s the point?”

What indeed? What did 2020, for all of its isolation and unrest, heroes and hopes, teach us about sports? And its role in our lives amid a global pandemic?

Sparrow learned what it was like to lose her compass while watching the Pios lose theirs. She learned that she mattered. All of them did. From her seat, two rows back of the glass, to the gang in the rafters. Every last lung and larynx.

“I mean, they get their energy from it,” Sparrow said of the Pioneers. “That’s been missing. You can tell that in their play.”

Sparrow, 52, can tell better than most. A ’94 DU grad, she’s had season tickets to the Pios for 15 of the past 26 years. She’s also a season-ticket holder for the Broncos and Rockies, as well as a foodie with an abiding, unabashed love of the Front Range restaurant scene. COVID’s basically taken a chainsaw to her entertainment-and-dining calendar, every week, since St. Patrick’s Day.

“I like to joke that I’m a ‘professional spectator,’” Sparrow chuckled. “I’m a girly-girl, but I love my sports. And yeah, it’s really kind of sad. It used to be a great thing to go to Coors Field on a summer’s night and the hockey games on Friday and Saturday night. What do you do now?”

We learned just how small and insignificant sports were in the grand scheme of life. Especially in a country trying to come to grips simultaneously with a pandemic, race relations and a contentious presidential election year.

Then again, one man’s reality check is another man’s escape. In some ways, sports was never more important. The way it created snapshots that forever bind us.

Jamal Murray’s tears of perspective in Orlando, the Nuggets’ star maturing as a player and as a human being on the same stage. CU linebacker Nate Landman throwing his body around in Boulder, willing the Buffs to a 4-0 record from out of nowhere, only to watch that body freakishly fail him, cruelly, on the last leg of the race.

The way it reminded us of what we took for granted. One another, mostly.

COVID-19 took lives and livelihoods. The rest of us had to cope with the consequences and absurdities of a new normal that forced us apart, lulled us to sleep, then pushed us apart again.

We’ll look back. Of the losses, especially the human ones, we’ll weep. Of the lighter moments, we’ll shake our heads.

The way the coronavirus forced the Denver Broncos to suit up a wide receiver to play quarterback. The way it reminded us that life isn’t a movie script, and that the NFL is still married, inextricably, to its bottom line.

The way it showed the lunacy at the top of Major League Baseball’s food chain and the hypocrisy among Power 5 colleges and their conferences, where tails wag the dogs forevermore. The way it ripped Colorado State’s football schedule in half. The way it stripped CU of a chance to play at USC —  twice. The way it convinced the Pac-12 to make the Buffs drive a football equipment truck halfway to Los Angeles for nothing.

Was it worth it? Did we need the diversion … at any cost? What did we learn?

THE COACH

Dave Logan learned that dominance never felt so blasted … exhausting.

His Cherry Creek Bruins football team went 9-0, won the Class 5A state title for a second consecutive season and extended their winning streak to 23 consecutive games.

“From a football standpoint, from a coaching standpoint, it was the most difficult year of my career,” the longtime prep football coach, voice of the Broncos and radio talk show host told The Post. “Because you never could settle in. There were so many unknowns and unexpected things that would pop up.

“It just was a very, very difficult season. I was so pleased that these schools were able to navigate through this as best they could and that these kids got a chance to play. And that’s the really critical component: That they got a chance to play (and) the seniors got a chance to experience one last (fall) season playing football.”

For coaches, though, every morning felt like a roll of the dice. COVID-19 had the power to stop a season, re-start it, and, on any given day, blow through a program’s depth chart like a tornado across the Heartland.

“After about a week (into the pandemic), I said on the air, ‘This looks like the zombie apocalypse. This is what it feels like before you get aliens flying out of the sky,’” Logan sighed. “That’s what it felt like to me. Very strange, disappointing, depressing and, at times, challenging. People I know have experienced a lot of highs and lows — and sometimes, those are in the same day. So, you try to keep things in perspective, and you feel for those who have lost loved ones or lost their work.

“It’s been an arduous year. It really has.”

THE PLAYER

Zach Kapushion learned that the grass isn’t always greener. Even from 1,400 miles away.

“I knew that, even if we moved, COVID could stop football in Georgia,” former Broomfield High School quarterback Zach Kapushion explained via email. “We talked about all of the scenarios and had to weigh the good with the bad.”

For much of the summer, Kapushion was preparing to help the Eagles, the 2019 Class 4A runners-up, make another run at a state title. But when the Colorado High School Activities Association initially elected to punt on playing football in 2020, Kapushion and his family started working the phones. If he wanted to pile up more game tape for college coaches, it would have to be somewhere else.

“We very quickly reached out to contacts in a few states to see if any of them knew of high schools that needed a quarterback,” Kapushion explained. “We looked for schools that didn’t have a starting junior or senior quarterback, because we did not want to displace another athlete.”

A family member suggested South Paulding High School in Douglasville, Ga., 22 miles east of Atlanta. The Kapushions flew south to visit the school on a Monday. While there, the coaches went over Zach’s game film and told him he would be their starter if he made the move.

By Thursday, the wheels were set in motion; Kapushion called Bromfield coach Blair Hubbard and teammates and told them he was transferring.

“The toughest moment was saying goodbye to coaches and friends that I cared about in order to pursue my own goals,” said Kapushion, who’d thrown for 17 scores and ran for two more as a junior. “In some ways, it felt selfish and I almost didn’t want to play unless they could all play, too.”

Zach had an aunt and uncle who lived about an hour away. As his parents could work remotely, they joined him in Georgia. But politics and sports eventually combined to sour things a bit down south.

“There was turmoil among the coaches and community about me coming into Georgia and having the starting position,” said Kapushion, who lost the No. 1 job after a Week 2 setback to North Paulding. “I was not used to watching the game from the sidelines.”

Meanwhile, back in Broomfield, CHSAA was reversing course on fall football, announcing a season that would be played from October to December. Kapushion found himself asking, internally: Did we make the right call?

“That was especially difficult,” Kapushion said. “However, in the pandemic, difficulties are relative. Some people have lost their lives or their jobs, so I always try to keep football in perspective.”

The 6-foot-2 quarterback eventually won back the starting job, leading the Spartans (5-5) to consecutive wins to close out the regular season.

“But it was not perfect there, either,” said Kapushion, who appeared in seven games. “We had players quarantined at times, tickets to games were limited, and our last game of the season was canceled due to COVID. That game had the potential of getting our team to the playoffs. It was a very disappointing and abrupt end.”

THE FAN

Duane Worley learned that baseball can go from the most social sport in the world to the loneliest.

It’s the isolation that stuck. And stunk. Even watching bad Rockies teams in person gets softened some by having friends and confidants at Coors Field within shouting distance.

“I just met some great people,” explained the 85-year-old Worley, who was No. 5 among the Rockies’ first six original season-ticket purchasers. “And you don’t have that watching the TV set.”

Things over the years that couldn’t keep Worley out of Coors:

• Thyroid cancer. (“I had 39 stitches, and my clamps went from the back of my ear down the side,” he recalled.)

• Valve replacement surgery. (“Had five stents put in.”)

Yet the coronavirus managed to pull off what life-changing surgeries couldn’t touch.

“An oncologist sees me every six months,” Worley said. “The point is, I’m 85 and a health risk. So I qualify as an All-Star if I want to go out and get COVID.”

Losing any baseball season is precious, but never more precious than in the winter of your days. And Worley’s been under stricter quarantine than most.

“My daughter won’t let me even go to the grocery store,” he cracked.

Television replicates things better than ever, especially in 4K, but some of the finer points still get lost from real life to the living room. In hockey and auto racing, it’s the speed. In basketball, it’s the size. In baseball, it’s the ambience.

The scents. The sounds. The waves of green grass that roll, like carpet, out to the padded outfield walls. The company. Worley’s usual seat isn’t far from the one used by Rockies owner Dick Monfort behind home plate.

“I stay away from saying things (to him) like, ‘They suck,’ because it’s apparent,’” Worley chuckled. “In general, I try to stay on the positive side of the world. For instance, when Trevor Story was called up, the first year that he was starting at shortstop (2016), he went out and he made a couple of what’s become the common great play … I would learn forward (to Monfort) and say, ‘You know, we don’t miss (Troy) Tulowitzki at all, do we?”

Worley misses Blake Street. Badly.

“If this vaccine gets here,” he said, “I will be the first in line to say, ‘Give me the damn thing, so I can go out and see the field again.’”

THE COOK

Eugenia Mays learned how to forgive. No matter how hard it was to forget.

“I learned how to be humble,” said Mays, who’d spent nearly two decades as a cook at Coors Field and Ball Arena before the pandemic stripped her of games and paychecks.

“I learned how to listen to everybody, like I always do. I learned how to be the person that I needed to be. If it wasn’t for holding hands with the Lord so long, I’d probably be crazy. But He squeezes my hand every day.”

When 2020 didn’t test her faith, it challenged her resolve. Already missing full-time work with no events at Ball Arena or Coors Field, a bad year got worse in early July. That’s when Mays, 62, got rear-ended at a stop light in Denver when another driver in a Range Rover slammed into her Buick Century.

“I went to the hospital, and they said my sciatic nerve is jacked up and I have some bulging disks and a few other things going on,” she said. “But here I am, talking to you.”

The other driver, fortunately, was properly insured. Mays remains more hurt, frankly, by what she feels is a lack of regard from the Rockies and Monfort toward longtime stadium employees. The ones who’ve been the backbone, from behind the scenes, for one of the best ballparks — and ballpark experiences — in the major leagues.

“I don’t know if they’ll get (a crowd in 2021),” she said. “But from the way they treated us, I’ve been speaking to people, and they don’t want to go back (to work) there. You put in ‘X’ amount of years, and when we need you, you turn your back on us? Not good.”

THE JERSEY GUY

Derek Friedman learned to laugh in the face of disaster. Largely because, by September, he’d long since run out of tears.

“I probably passed that somewhere around the sixth time we were broken into,” the general manager of the metro’s four Sportsfan sports merchandise stores said. “It gets to the point where you realize that your imagination for all the things that could happen wasn’t ever big enough.”

Break-ins. Looting. Losses “well into six figures,” Friedman sighed.

The pandemic got the downhill slide started, and mercilessly. The sudden drop-off of in-store foot traffic that resulted from the coronavirus was acute during a stretch in April and May that should’ve seen Nuggets and Avalanche playoff runs overlap with Rockies Opening Day.

“I’m not furloughed, but the company’s not paying,” Friedman chuckled.

On the plus side, he’s heading into the New Year with his health. And drive. And a growing sense that 2021, eventually, is going to return to 2019 business levels. Particularly if fans can attend games again at Ball Arena and Coors Field again.

Then again, we’ve learned not to get our hopes up.

“Every business plan comes with an asterisk,” Friedman said. “In this case, the asterisks are ginormous. When we look, (you see) what feels like will be an intense amount of pent-up demand. Assuming things fall into place, 2021 could be an amazing year.”

Staff reporter Kyle Fredrickson contributed to this story.