A typical high school spring sports season in Central New York involves plenty of challenges.
Whether it’s adjusting practices and game schedules due to snow and rain, or dealing with injuries, and keeping teenagers focused with so much, from proms to final exams to graduation, on the horizon, there’s no shortage of issues from March to June for coaches to face.
Now those same coaches had to deal with something unprecedented in their lifetimes – not having a season at all.
Schools across the state closed in mid-March, just as tryouts and practices were about to get underway. Gradually, hopes for any kind of season flickered away as the number of infections and deaths climbed at the local, state, national and worldwide levels.
On April 27, the New York State Public High School Athletic Association canceled its slate of state championships. Four days later, governor Andrew Cuomo announced that schools would stay closed for the rest of the academic year.
East Syracuse Minoa’s Mark Carr has a particular perspective on this, since he coaches in fall, winter and spring, including what would have been his current duties with the track and field Spartans.
Carr said he, along with fellow coaches Jim Gormey and Mike Eschbascher, have stayed in constant contact with their athletes through Google Hangout and given them weekly workouts and lessons.
One creative way ESM track athletes found to keep their season going was to stage a “virtual relay” last weekend, with boys and girls runners each running a half-mile, putting it on video and then clocking their times using GPS.
“All of us have been trying to give the kids hope, especially the seniors,” said Carr. “At least we can get them something.”
Elsewhere at ESM, girls golf coach Michael Ferris noted that the lost season has gained for his team an opportunity for players past and present to connect.
Through the last couple of months, said Ferris, ESM girls golf alumni have sent a series of morale-boosting notes to current players, and the hope is for all of them to get together for a special Senior Night later this month.
Over at Christian Brothers Academy, Pat Britton was set to take over as head coach for girls lacrosse after Doug Sedgwick, who led the Brothers to a quartet of state championships in the last decade, stepped down after the 2019 season.
Instead, there wasn’t a season, and Britton said he and assistant Joe Bonacci found many different ways to connect with players, whether it was sending clips from college games to mental work that involved treating each day as if school and lacrosse was still going on.
“We have a great group of creative kids and an awesome culture that keeps everyone close,” said Britton.
Britton added that it’s a more challenging recruiting environment, too, since summer and fall tournaments could fall victim to the pandemic so “we’re spending a lot of our time right now finding creative ways to help our players.”
At its most basic level, though, it all returns to what was lost by not having a season this spring, as CBA’s boys lacrosse head coach, Ric Beardsley, pointed out.
With a senior-heavy roster back from a team that won the sectional Class C championship a year ago, Beardsley said that it was terrible not seeing what would happen to them on the field in 2020, especially given the way his veteran players had developed over the course of the last four years.
Adding to all this is the uncertainty of what might happen in the autumn – something that Carr pointed out as he coaches boys soccer at ESM, saying that he would need to change to virtual workouts if he can’t have his usual summer programs.
“I am really concerned about the fall,” said Carr.
