By: Aaron Robinson
The date Wednesday March 11, 2020 will be forever etched in global sports history. At around 9:30 p.m. Eastern time that day, the NBA suspended it’s season after star player, Rudy Gobert tested positive for the Coronavirus, or COVID-19.
Thirteen hours later, Donovan Mitchell, Gobert’s teammate on the Utah Jazz, also tested positive for the virus.
As the pro sports world reeled from that news, high school and college winter teams kept playing in conference or state tournaments. National Collegiate and state scholastic tournaments loomed.
Then the other shoe, or sneaker, or skate, fell.
Just before noon that day, the Big Ten cancelled its mens and womens basketball tournaments. The AAC, SEC, and BIG 12 followed.
By 3pm, the coronavirus threat had wiped out every mens and womens conference tournament in college basketball.
Just ninety minutes later, the NCAA did the unthinkable: it cancelled March Madness.
By the evening on March 12, the NCAA decided to cancel all spring sports.
COVID-19 turned out to be the virus that changed college sports, upending the lives of thousands of collegiate athletes whose careers abruptly ended. Now these athletes, and the NCAA are struggling with what to do next.
“When I heard that, I thought it was done so I definitely started crying,” Justin Banks, a senior first baseman for Coppin State said.
“Saying goodbye to my teammates was probably the worst part because we were getting so close and the bond we created was just special and for it to end out of nowhere was heartbreaking for sure,” Banks said.
“I was kind of confused because I never thought in a million years that all sports, the NCAA, and March Madness, things so far above us, would be cancelled too, so I was definitely confused and shocked and then I just went through being super upset because obviously for me, I knew my career was over,” Victoria Bobinski, a senior lacrosse player at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, said.
The next day on March 13, Jeff Goodman of Stadium reported that the NCAA’s Council Coordination Committee had recommended that athletes who participated in spring sports get their years back. He said the committee would also be discussing this idea for Winter athletes.
It was then announced that an official decision would be made on March 30, after the NCAA voted on a number of issues, including whether or not to give athletes who played winter and spring sports another year of eligibility.
That possibility meant that maybe the careers of these athletes might not end.
The NCAA is considering whether to grant spring sports athletes an extra year of eligibility, in effect making all red shirts for the 2020 season.
For winter sports, senior athletes who exhausted eligibility in 2019-2020 however, this likely won’t happen. Their careers are likely done.
Now spring-sport seniors will likely have a decision to make: to play or not to play.
For Banks, this decision is an easy one.
“Oh definitely, I plan on playing baseball as long as I can,” Banks said. “I love this game, I’ll always love it, so if I get an opportunity to play i’m definitely going to take advantage of it.”
For others, such as Coppin State senior pitcher Corey Treyes, the decision is not as easy.
“I am still in the middle right now. Having a kid at home, there are decisions that I have to make so i’m not too sure but it is a possibility,” Treyes said. “Because there has to be food on the table for my kid, and my parents have helped me enough for four years so it’s a tough decision.”
Many seniors are at the points in their lives where it is time to make real world decisions, so as enticing as the opportunity to come back and play another season of the sport they love might be, for some this simply isn't a reality.
“I’m doing the masters program for teaching and I knew that I was going to be going to school and working full time and taking classes at night. So freshman year I had already decided that I physically wouldn’t be able to do (a fifth year),” Bobinski said.
For other athletes, such as Pat Battista, a fifth-year lacrosse player at Quinnipiac, coming back to school for a sixth year is something that is unrealistic.
“At this point in my life right now, i’m ready to move on,” said Battista. “This was kind of my last year, my victory lap, one more year of lacrosse to take advantage of, and now that just gets stripped from you, it was like that was it, there is no more for me.”
For Battista, it is time to face the reality that his career, like other fifth-year spring athletes, is over.
“Even though the opportunity is there, I just feel as though it's not, and that feeling is the same across the board for fifth years,” Battista said.
Another major factor that goes into a lot of athletes' decisions is money. For athletes who play mens and womens basketball at the Division I level, full scholarships are offered each year you participate in the sport, unless, of course, you are a walk-on.
For athletes who play spring sports, this is not the case. These athletes often rely on aid given to them by their coaches to help alleviate the cost of tuition.
“We were talking about it with our coach and while they can give us that extra eligibility, there are a lot of kids who are on scholarship throughout the nation and that money is already promised to incoming freshmen,” Tyler Devito, a senior lacrosse player at Quinnipiac, said.
Because spots and or money might not be available at the school that athletes are currently attending, some athletes have considered grad transferring. This is a concept that is extremely popular in basketball, where athletes are allowed to graduate and then transfer to another school to play their last year of eligibility without having to sit out a year.
But even this option is not as sure fire as you would like to think.
“What is also factoring in is how is this all going to really work?” Treyes questioned. “If I plan on grad transferring, how many other seniors in the nation are planning on grad transferring and you still have kids coming in so there might be an overload at schools so i’m not sure if there’s going to be a spot for me somewhere else.”
For Tyler Devito, grad transferring could possibly mean taking up an entirely different sport.
“Because I played football in high school, I could take that extra year of eligibility and play two years of football somewhere else,” Devito said.
Devito, a student in Quinnipiac's "3+1" business program has already completed his undergraduate coursework, and was using his fourth season of eligibility to work towards earning his masters in business administration at Quinnipiac.
The NCAA allows you five years to participate in four full seasons of collegiate athletics. But if you play 4 years of a single sport, you are permitted to use that fifth season to play a different sport if you so choose.
Devito played football in high school, staring at cornerback and wide receiver, and was even good enough to garner the attention of Division II and Division III programs.
“I miss football, I love playing it, I'm a competitor and I want to get out there with the team and just grind,” Devito said. “If I can find an offer from the right school that was the right fit academically and financially, I would definitely take it in full consideration,” he continued.
The COVID-19 outbreak has undoubtedly forced many athletes into decisions that they could have never seen coming. It has ended seasons, careers, and chapters in thousands of athletes' lives.
Now, reality will happen, whether the athlete is ready or not.
But even through these dark times, it is essential to always keep things in perspective.
“The situation is bigger than us, it’s affecting everybody,” Devito said. “It’s not like I can be like woah is me because there are so many other people who are dealing with lost family members and people who are sick and that's really the main priority of what's going on right now.”
For Devito, this pandemic will only serve to make athletes stronger and help them to get over other hurdles in life that may come their way.
“I commend all of the kids out there who keep their heads high and they are going to be great successful people and if this is the worst thing that happens in their life, then they have a great life, but it’s still something that I think people are underestimating how much it affected so many kids,” Devito said.
For athletes such as Corey Treyes, the NCAA controls whether or not he will get another year to play the game that he loves. They will vote to decide whether he, as well as other athletes across the country deserve to go out on their own terms.
“Hopefully they make the right decision when they vote on the 30th because a lot of kids' hearts and souls go into the games we play,” Treyes said.