By: Andrew and Aaron Robinson
COVID-19 first threatened to dissolve the year in sports, but Major League Baseball, the WNBA, NBA, MLS and PGA and LPGA tours have all resumed play, with the NFL ready to start its season on Sept. 10.
But some of the most deserving athletes competing in NCAA Division II sports have been left behind. Their 2020-2021 season is over before it began.
The pain is even worse for athletes at the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, New York, away from the lights of the Manhattan campus out on Long Island, their program has suspended play for two years.
COVID-19 wiped out not just the end of the 2019-2020 season but has also eliminated the 2020-21 and 2021-2022 seasons under a decision by NYIT administrators.
“For the next two years, unfortunately, we will no longer be competing with our peers in the East Coast Conference (ECC) and NCAA Division II,” NYIT president Henry Foley announced on Aug. 20.
The announcement left men's basketball coach Evan Conti in shock.
“When we got that news it was just like the one thing that no one could have ever anticipated happening just happened,” said Conti.
This announcement shocked the sports world, as the news came approximately two weeks before the start of classes at NYIT. Leaving student athletes, coaches, and athletic staff devastated, and scrambling to figure out what’s next.
“When we got that news it was just like the one thing that no one could have ever anticipated happening just happened” Evan Conti, Head Men’s Basketball Coach at NYIT, said.
Despite the fact that Stanford, Iowa and other power 5 schools had eliminated some athletic programs and that the Pac 12 and Big 10 had postponed the 2020 football season until the spring, Conti struggled with the NYIT decision to suspend play for what will seem like an eternity to coaches and players
“It was one of those things that you can’t fathom at the time and it still just doesn’t make sense,” Conti Said.
First-year players are particularly reeling from the decision as they never had the chance to test themselves in collegiate basketball competition. They learned of the move two weeks before school started.
Conti landed four first-year recruits, including Ahkee Anderson, Dan Braster, Joey Merrill and Miles Monchecourt. The season looked promising.
Monchecourt committed to the Bears in October of 2019, and signed his NLI in November of 2019, meaning for the entirety of his senior basketball season, he was not in contact with any other schools or recruited by any other schools, and had his sights set on attending NYIT in the Fall of 2020.
Thus, when the news came out that the university was suspending all sports on campus, Monchecourt, along with the bears three other incoming freshmen, was left with no college home, and a huge decision to make about what to do next .
“I was pretty shocked,” Monchecourt, a Rochester, NY native, said. “ All the work I know the coaching staff put in, Evan with recruiting a great freshman class coming in, they were building something super special...It was definitely a hard pill to swallow.”
For others such as NYIT rising senior Opong Bramble, they faced a completely different set of challenges.
Figuring out how to cope with the loss of something that you have poured your heart and soul into for the last three years is a tall task for anyone. Let alone trying to do so during a global pandemic and a racial uproar this country hasn’t seen since the civil rights movement.
“We spend years grinding, sacrificing time with our family, friends, going out, literally putting our bodies on the line to do this one thing,” Bramble said. “It’s like something died, like a really huge part of my life just died. And I'm still in disbelief.”
Bramble won a total of 8 games during his first two years at NYIT, but was a key contributor to the Bears 19-20 team that won six conference games and appeared in the schools first playoff since the 14-15 season.
Conti led the team to a playoff berth in his first season at the helm and built high expectations for the team this upcoming season following a strong recruiting class.
Now, that is gone for his team and all other NYIT programs.
“All the teams were on the rise,” Conti said. “All the teams were more than holding their own. Baseball made it to the college world series, lacrosse won four national championships, soccer has been to multiple NCAA tournaments, you name it, every sport there is a rich tradition of success.”
Now, there is nothing to build from.
“A legacy just goes away,” Conti said. “What do you do about that?”
The reality of this virus is that it could very well get worse before it gets better. With no vaccine in sight, and many college campuses electing to go with online learning options in favor of in person learning, many athletic programs simply don’t have the money to support having college athletics.
The most unsettling part of the situation is that COVID-19 may be here for years and that may spell lasting trouble for Division II and Division III sports as well as programs at the NAIA level that are already struggling to survive.
“Now it really worries me about the whole state of division II athletics,” Conti said. “How are you going to be able to pay for the testing required to have the kids get tested every week, have the kids get tested before they play every single game?”
Nonetheless, there are many people who still remain hopeful, and optimistic that despite the coronavirus pandemic, and all the chaos that has come with it, that there are brighter days ahead.
“It's always (like I say, and like Coach Conti says to me all the time) next play,” Bramble said. “You’ve got to have a short term memory, and go on to the next thing and do the best at that thing and not let one setback hold you back for the entire game, or for the rest of your life, or whatever situation you’re in.”
Because just like all bad things that happen in life, this too shall pass.
Full sit down with NYIT mens basketball below: