2020 Spring Sports Can­celled

MISHAWAKA—The Na­tional As­so­ci­a­tion of In­ter­col­le­giate Ath­let­ics (NAIA) can­celled the 2020 springs sports sea­son in a March 16 press re­lease.  

“All pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios that would have sup­ported a spring sports sea­son were se­ri­ously con­sid­ered by mul­ti­ple NAIA gov­er­nance groups,” NAIA Pres­i­dent and CEO Jim Carr said, ac­cord­ing to the press re­lease. “How­ever, the grow­ing state of emer­gency due to COVID-19, as well as the Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol’s rec­om­men­da­tion yes­ter­day to limit gath­er­ings to fewer than 50 peo­ple for eight weeks, meant we could not in good con­science move for­ward with the spring sports sea­son and cham­pi­onships.” 

Bethel Uni­ver­sity spring sports and any win­ter sports still play­ing cut their sea­sons short. The an­nounce­ment came four days af­ter Bethel trans­ferred all face-to-face in­struc­tion to on­line.  

Ini­tially, Bethel post­poned all games and matches tak­ing place the week­end of March 13-15. As the week­end pro­gressed, the en­tire spring sea­son came into ques­tion. 

On March 13, the Cross­roads League an­nounced that the spring sea­son would be post­poned un­til April 1. But on Sat­ur­day, March 14, the talk of post­pone­ment evolved into sea­son can­cel­la­tion. To com­pli­cate mat­ters, prac­tice could not be man­dated by coaches dur­ing a post­pone­ment pe­riod. 

An­tic­i­pat­ing a pos­si­ble can­cel­la­tion, Seth Zart­man, Bethel Base­ball Head Coach, sent out a mes­sage to his play­ers about play­ing a scrim­mage on Mon­day, March 16. He said the scrim­mage was likely the last time his team would be on the field to­gether. They re­ceived the mes­sage about the sea­son’s can­cel­la­tion just be­fore the scrim­mage started. 

“I lit­er­ally felt like some­body had punched me in the gut,” Zart­man said. “I had about five min­utes to pre­pare my­self to go into the locker room to talk to the guys to give them the of­fi­cial in­for­ma­tion of what was hap­pen­ing.” 

Zart­man said it was one of the most dif­fi­cult meet­ings of his coach­ing ca­reer. The team spent 30-45 min­utes in the locker room pro­cess­ing the sit­u­a­tion. 

The news about the sea­son’s can­cel­la­tion also sad­dened the men’s golf team. While the team fin­ished their fall sea­son, they had not started prac­tic­ing for the spring. 

“They were pretty up­set [at first],” Men’s Golf Coach Adam Sharp said of his team’s re­ac­tion. “Now that we kind of un­der­stand more about it, I think we’re un­der­stand­ing. . .this was the right call.” 

Sharp con­sulted with As­so­ci­ate Ath­letic Di­rec­tor Christo­pher Hess prior to the can­cel­la­tion of their sea­son. Hess let Sharp know of the up­com­ing changes, so he could with­draw from tour­na­ments and no­tify his team. 

Ge­an­dra Almeida, wom­en’s golf head coach, said she did not ex­pect the sud­den changes. The sea­son can­celed one week af­ter the wom­en’s golf team ar­rived back from their Florida trip. 

“All of my team…they were pretty bummed about it,” Almeida said. “Es­pe­cially, my se­nior be­cause she had high ex­pec­ta­tions for the sea­son, and it was go­ing to be her last sea­son.” 

The NAIA and NC­CAA are al­low­ing grad­u­at­ing se­niors in spring sports to play an­other year of el­i­gi­bil­ity. The win­ter sea­son ath­letes are not be­ing given that same op­por­tu­nity. 

While se­nior Brooke Thomas is con­sid­er­ing play­ing an­other year of wom­en’s golf, she plans on go­ing to med­ical school. Almeida said if Thomas gets ac­cepted into med­ical school, she will not re­turn. 

Sharp as­sumed nei­ther of his two de­part­ing play­ers will re­turn. Ju­nior Max Vos is head­ing to Notre Dame next fall for the 3-2 En­gi­neer­ing Pro­gram. Se­nior Ro­man Ojala will grad­u­ate at the end of this se­mes­ter. 

Zart­man es­ti­mated at least half of his se­niors are se­ri­ously con­sid­er­ing re­turn­ing for an­other year of base­ball.  

“That gives a chance for those se­niors to come back, de­pend­ing on what their aca­d­e­mic sit­u­a­tion looks like,” Zart­man said. “It’s go­ing to look dif­fer­ent for each guy.” 

But grad­u­at­ing ath­letes in win­ter sports will not be able to re­ceive an­other year of el­i­gi­bil­ity. Men’s Bas­ket­ball Head Coach Steve Drabyn said Ath­letic Di­rec­tor Tony Na­tali emailed him about the NA­IA’s de­ci­sion.  

Since most win­ter sports are fin­ished or just fin­ish­ing up, Drabyn said he un­der­stands the de­ci­sion. 

“Those two se­niors - Gavin Rasler and Keonte Jenk­ins – they played the en­tire reg­u­lar sea­son, the con­fer­ence tour­na­ment and just missed out on a na­tional tour­na­ment,” Drabyn said. “Yeah, the op­por­tu­nity for them to come back would’ve been kind of cool, but I cer­tainly un­der­stand in not grant­ing them that.” 

The men’s bas­ket­ball came off a March 3 loss to In­di­ana Wes­leyan Uni­ver­sity. The loss cost them a chance to qual­ify for the NAIA Na­tional Tour­na­ment. Prior to the can­ce­la­tion, Bethel was prepar­ing for the NC­CAA North Cen­tral Re­gion Cham­pi­onship. 

Drabyn said his team looked good in prac­tice through the week prior to the an­nounce­ment. While their game was orig­i­nally sched­uled for March 14, it got post­poned the day be­fore. The NC­CAA can­celed the game on March 16, along with all spring sports. 

Most ath­letes re­turned home, ex­cept for a few in­ter­na­tional stu­dents. Three of the four in­ter­na­tional men’s bas­ket­ball play­ers are still liv­ing in cam­pus hous­ing. Ni­coloy Bai­ley, a ju­nior and men’s bas­ket­ball cen­ter from Ja­maica, re­turned to his host fam­ily in Ohio.  

Drabyn said Fresh­men Filip Segota and Mil­hailo Sto­janov from Ser­bia and Ju­nior Jani Grif­fith from the United King­dom are taken care of by Bethel. All three play­ers planned to fly home un­til they re­al­ized the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion is not much bet­ter in both coun­tries. 

Almeida, a 2014 Bethel grad­u­ate, is a for­mer in­ter­na­tional stu­dent from Brazil. She said a friend of her de­ceased fa­ther died from the COVID-19 virus. 

“This [virus] has al­ready af­fected us with some­one close to our fam­ily,” Almeida said. “I’m telling my mom… 'Take it se­ri­ously. Be iso­lated.’ And luck­ily, she has my broth­ers there, so they can do what­ever she needs.” 

While all coaches are prac­tic­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing from home, they still have the same work­load. Coaches are hav­ing one-on-one meet­ings with their ath­letes via Zoom.  

Also, the clos­ing of Bethel’s cam­pus pre­sents chal­lenges for re­cruit­ing. Re­cruits are still able to speak to coaches through dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion means. How­ever, re­cruits can­not walk around and en­ter build­ings on cam­pus in-per­son. 

“The more dif­fi­cult part [of re­cruit­ing] is that stu­dents still want to see our cam­pus,” Na­tali said. “So, our coaches have been do­ing vir­tual tours with their re­cruits.” 

Some coaches are us­ing other cre­ative meth­ods for re­cruit­ing.  

Drabyn said As­sis­tant Coach Mark Pols­grove took a re­cruit and the re­cruit’s mom on a drive around cam­pus. Pols­grove drove in one ve­hi­cle, while the re­cruit and the mom drove in a sep­a­rate ve­hi­cle. He talked to them on the phone as he showed them each build­ing. 

“Go­ing for­ward here, a lot of these guys we’re re­cruit­ing now are guys who haven’t even vis­ited cam­pus,” Drabyn said. “Most of them are guys we haven’t even seen play live, so it’s an in­ter­est­ing sit­u­a­tion for all of us.” 

Both Sharp and Almeida said they do not face the same is­sues with re­cruit­ing. Most high school girls golf teams play in the fall. Since Almeida watches re­cruits in the fall, she is fin­ished re­cruit­ing for next sea­son.  

The high school men’s golf sea­son is played in the spring, so Sharp did not get a chance to re­cruit. But all his re­cruits for next sea­son com­mit­ted be­fore the spring sea­son. 

For Ryan Som­mers, Bethel cross coun­try head coach and track & field as­sis­tant coach, re­cruit­ing might be eas­ier. Dur­ing the spring, some re­cruits are still un­com­mit­ted to a school. 

“Some kids are wait­ing be­cause they’re hop­ing to have a great sea­son and try to go [to a Di­vi­sion I school] or some­thing like that,” Som­mers said. “Usu­ally, you get re­cruits that you’re talk­ing to that have a break-out sea­son and then a [Di­vi­sion I] school comes in at the last sec­ond and they’ll snatch them away.” 

With spring sea­son now can­celed, Som­mers said he might not have to deal with los­ing re­cruits. 

Som­mers said his ath­letes can­not prac­tice of­fi­cially, so he gave them the choice of tak­ing a break or con­tin­u­ing to main­tain their work­out sched­ule as best as pos­si­ble. 

“I gave them the op­tion at this point, if they want to take a lit­tle break, they can take a break,” Som­mers said. “If they wanted to con­tinue to do some work­outs and wanted a few track work­outs a cou­ple times a week…I would do that.” 

As a li­censed coun­selor in the State of In­di­ana, Som­mers noted the im­por­tance for ath­letes to re­main in­ten­tional with re­la­tion­ships. He said tech­nol­ogy can help ac­com­plish this tem­porar­ily. 

“I think it’s help­ing peo­ple un­der­stand the im­por­tance of some of their re­la­tion­ships,” Som­mers said. “Be­cause there’s also a lot of fear go­ing on and at the same time, you have to re­al­ize there’s peo­ple who maybe their home en­vi­ron­ment is not the best.” 

For coaches like him­self, Som­mers said their role is to con­tact their ath­letes on a reg­u­lar ba­sis. The role of a Bethel coach is to some­times be a pas­tor coach and come along­side ath­letes. 

To spread en­cour­age­ment to the rest of cam­pus, the Ath­letic De­part­ment an­nounced the Pi­lot Light Ini­tia­tive. Na­tali said he wanted to con­tinue cross-sup­port among teams this aca­d­e­mic year; with most stu­dents at home, Na­tali de­cided to have ath­letes and coaches post videos of en­cour­age­ment. 

The videos started be­ing posted April 2 on Twit­ter, In­sta­gram and Face­book ac­counts of the Ath­let­ics De­part­ment. Videos will con­tinue to be posted through April 9.