Last week marked the fifth anniversary of COVID-19 being declared a worldwide pandemic. It touched all aspects of life, including the sports world. Locally, the IHSA suspended all competitions, and that lasted for the remainder of the school year.
COVID ended potentially good seasons for several teams, and for this Tate’s Take column, I talked with a couple of former coaches as well as an athletic director to get their thoughts.
Former Fenwick boys basketball coach Staunton Peck was preparing the Friars for a Class 3A sectional final at St. Ignatius against the Wolfpack. Led by seniors Cal Malcow, Ryan Planek, and Sean Walsh; juniors Bryce Hopkins and Trey Pettigrew; and sophomores David Geiser and Max Reese, Fenwick was a state contender with a 26-7 record and had outscored its opponents in the playoffs by a 262-148 margin.
“We’d beaten Westinghouse to get to the sectional final,” said Peck, now the president of St. Catherine-St. Lucy School in Oak Park. “St. Ignatius told us we were limited to two parents per player for the game; that was what the IHSA was doing, trying to figure things out on the fly without canceling the season.
“That Thursday, the kids asked if we were still playing. We said yes, but that Friday at 11, the IHSA canceled the state series.”
It was frustrating for Peck because he felt the Friars were playing well and capable of not just winning the sectional, but potentially advancing downstate.
“Obviously disappointing. I think we had the second-most wins of any team in program history,” he said. “Bryce was conference player of the year, and Trey was also all-conference. We had a lot of accolades, but we felt there was unfinished business, and you can never go back.”
Meanwhile, the Oak Park and River Forest High softball team never played a game that spring. The Huskies got some practice days in before the plug was pulled.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” said retired OPRF coach Mel Kolbusz. “We had an outdoor practice at Ridgeland Common on March 13, and everything was going good; we had a nice team coming back. I get home, and there’s an email saying school’s going to be canceled for a little while. The next time I saw the players, it was May 1, when they turned in their uniforms. I felt so bad for those kids.”
Kolbusz especially felt awful for his five seniors – Ali Burns, Karly Cantrell, Jacky Neuman, Sarah Phelan, and Julia Youman – whose OPRF careers abruptly ended.
“Not only did their careers end,” Kolbusz said, “but they also had graduation virtually. I felt awful for them. They were really good, skilled kids.”
Trinity athletic director Ken Trendel was in his 17th year at Dominican University in River Forest as an assistant athletic director for communications in 2020 and was with the baseball team in Florida when word came about the season being called off.
“It was super-emotional because we had guys who knew they were going to be playing their last game,” Trendel said. “We had a pitcher who was hoping to get cleared to return from injury later in the season; he was a senior who got hurt as a junior.”
In the Stars’ final game of the trip, Dominican head coach Steve Hardman allowed the injured senior, who hadn’t received the medical clearance, to take the mound for a few warmup pitches in the middle of an inning. Once he completed his pitches, Hardman called time once the hitter came up to the plate and brought in a healthy reliever.
“It was a really cool experience, but also emotional,” Trendel said. “The young man just lost it, and all his teammates came out to the mound and hugged him.”
When Trendel moved on to Trinity that fall, COVID was still wreaking havoc. But he says his Dominican experience helped him manage the situation.
“We’d spent so much time on Zoom trying to figure how to return safely,” he said. “I did feel prepared coming to Trinity in what we needed to do and how to do it.”
Eventually, things returned to normal in the fall of 2021. But I feel for those kids losing an entire year or so of sports and how much that hurt.
“We talk about seniors in high school and college and what they lost,” Trendel said, “but even fifth- and eighth-graders also missed. It’s really sad to look back at how much people missed out, but we understood why we were doing it, and it was a little easier to swallow.”
Here’s hoping that we never have to swallow it again.