GREENFIELD — With two days left before the Southport Regional boys basketball tournament, New Palestine head coach Trent Whitaker and his Dragons were preparing for Class 4A third-ranked Lawrence North, not a pandemic.
On Thursday, however, everything changed by the minute as the spread of coronavirus both nationally and globally brought an abrupt end to NCAA sports, professional sports and now has put Indiana high school sports in question.
Hours after the Indiana High School Athletic Association released a statement concerning safety measures surrounding this weekend’s regional basketball games and the gymnastics state finals, New Palestine athletics director Al Cooper addressed the team.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
Click here to purchase photos from this galleryWith the cancellation of the Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament in Indianapolis, the upcoming NCAA National Tournament and the postponement of NHL, NBA and MLB sports, the sectional champion Dragons were forced to face the potential reality ahead.
They might have played their last game.
“I think it was Dawson (Eastes) who asked, is there a chance it could be cancelled? And, Cooper wanted to say, ‘we’re playing,’ but truthfully, there’s a chance,” Whitaker said. “I told all the kids, if this is our last time together, if it is cancelled, I appreciated everything they’ve done, and the four seniors.
“It was kind of tough to try to think you’re supposed to play in two days, but you’re kind of giving an end of the year speech and telling the kids you love them. It was tough.”
Sports at all levels began feeling the impact on Wednesday evening when Utah Jazz all-star center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, which cut short the Jazz’s game against the Oklahoma Thunder. The NBA announced the season would be suspended indefinitely not long afterward.
The dominoes continued to fall in the passing hours and into Thursday as the NCAA cancelled conference tournaments, remaining winter championships and postponed spring sports.
Soon after, the NHL and MLS made their official announcements. The NFL owners meetings were cancelled, the Boston Marathon was postponed and more than 10 NFL teams closed their facilities and cancelled travel plans, accordingly.
“With everything that happened yesterday after the 5 o’clock hour, I started thinking about how we were going to approach this, if we needed to or what we would do in the case of this,” Greenfield-Central athletics director Jared Manning said. “Some of the stuff we already thought about, and I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think we’re done yet.”
On Saturday, Greenfield-Central High School is hosting a Class 2A IHSAA regional tournament, as of Thursday evening.
Thursday afternoon, IHSAA commissioner Bobby Cox announced in a press conference that the remaining games in the boys basketball state tournament will continue as scheduled but with limited spectators in attendance as the state seeks to prevent the spread of the coronavius pandemic (COVID-19).
As a precaution, those permitted to attend the regional basketball games on Saturday must have a ticket issued from their school’s athletic office to gain entry.
Each game will be limited to 75 spectators per participating school, excluding each team’s 12 rostered players. Those among the 75 include school administrators, coaches, essential personnel and immediate family members of the coaching staff and players.
Non-varsity boys basketball participants, cheerleaders, dance teams, school mascots and pep bands are not permitted to attend the games.
“It has a big impact on how we’re going to operate, and we’ve working on trying to figure out logistics on how we’re going to handle some things and how we’re going to cover what we need to have covered,” Manning said.
“It doesn’t make things easier for anybody. That’s the question we’re getting. It should make it easier for you? Not really because now we need to come up with different entries and those types of needs.”
Providing a safe environment for players, coaches and spectators is the top priority for Manning and his staff. The IHSAA has granted each individual host site to act accordingly and delay start times and entry between the two morning regional games to sanitize the venue as needed.
The tournament’s first game is set to tip at 10 a.m. with the other semifinal at noon.
“That’s one of the questions I asked the IHSAA earlier in one of our conference calls. Do we have flexibility in delaying the start of Game 2 on Saturday to sanitize the fan seating area, scoring table and bench area, so we’re doing our due diligence to make sure things aren’t being spread? Do we have the flexibility of removing everyone from our venue between Games 1 and 2 just to minimize the amount of people we have in our facility?,” Manning said. “And, they said yes. We’re probably going to end up doing that just to minimize the amount of people we have around each other and in our facility.”
The gymnastics state finals, which is scheduled for Saturday at Ball State Worthen Arena, will be conducted without spectators, according to the IHSAA’s announcement.
Set to begin at 1 p.m., the event will consist of participants, essential workers, coaches, spotters and medical personnel only.
New Palestine senior Grace Shanahan, who qualified for her first-career state finals, will compete as an individual in Muncie.
“There’s really no good reaction other than to feel really bad for our athletes that worked so hard, number one, to get there and then not be able to play in front of their fans or in gymnastics’ case their parents,” Cooper said. “It’s awful. It’s unfair, but there’s nothing we can do. It is a precautionary item. It is something from a historic standpoint, we’ve never had to deal with. But, again, it’s necessary. We have to protect everybody and do what’s right.”
As of Thursday, what’s right is limitation, but as schools around the Central Indiana area began to issues statements on closures beginning today, the situation continues to be unpredictable and problematic in the weeks to come.
Greenfield-Central and Mt. Vernon high schools have their spring breaks set to begin on Monday and run through March 27. New Palestine and Eastern Hancock high schools start their break on March 23 and end on April 3.
With Marion County schools closed until April 5, most administrators foresee many school districts taking the same measures, which means student-athletes won’t be able to practice, beginning today until schools officially reopen.
“There’s no playbook. Our corporation has taken the initiative to cancel (Friday) and all of next week prior to spring break. Many schools are going into spring break. Two of the four county schools are going into spring break. If we cancel up until spring break and then the two weeks after, so we won’t even go back to school until April 6, nor will any of our teams practice,” Cooper said.
“So, hopefully, we come back April 6, and we have to start our 10 practices again (for springs sports), not so much for those sports that have been involved, but they’ve been off for three weeks, and they’re going to need to have some lead time into preparation before we can even have a contest. We’ll follow the IHSAA rules for the safety of everyone and that’s something, unfortunately, we don’t have any control over.”
The fate of this weekend’s high school sporting events remain in question as decisions made in regards to public health and safety are being weighed.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out. Not even from an athletic standpoint, but just for our kids in general, coming to school and the educational process,” Manning said. “It’s crazy. It’s something I’ve never heard of, been a part of. It’s uncharted territory for just about everybody. I think that’s the part that’s most concerning. We don’t have any experience with this.”
Normally a positive during a national crisis, sports have served a prominent role in helping distract the public in times of distress. This time, this might not be the case.
“I think this is the first time that I’ve seen something that’s had this big of an impact. Everyone is kind of comparing it to 9/11. Just how it’s kind of stunned everyone, but sports is what brought people back together after that,” Whitaker said. “People rallied with the National Anthem and different things. But here, we’re talking about shutting things down for seasons. The NCAA is shutting spring sports down and sports are just gone, it seems like.”
For the New Palestine Dragons boys basketball players, they hope they can end their season the right way as the state tournament could face cancellation in the next 24 hours.
“We stuck around a little bit longer, and we had a couple of seniors sticking around longer when I left,” Whitaker said. “It’s been a surreal moment for everybody, and they don’t want to see it end like this, but I guess if it does, we won our last game. It would be nice to say that one year.”
